


Cold Sunshine

by Gift_Giving



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Disorder, Dean Winchester Has Issues, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Female Sam Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Food Issues, Gender Roles, Gift Fic, Meg Lives, Mental Health Issues, POV Multiple, Panic Attacks, Protective Dean Winchester, Rape Recovery, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, The Winchester Gospels, it's also incredibly long, this was incredibly painful to write, you guys have no idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 04:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gift_Giving/pseuds/Gift_Giving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam spends half her life trying not to panic. Dean spends half of his trying to calm her down. Demon blood, angels, and an Apocalypse don't make it easier for either of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> This story is actually a gift, but the prompt was only "girl!Sam, but make it realistic, so probably not happy."
> 
> Basically, the concept comes from the idea that guys are taught to internalize a lot of their emotions, which can lead to anger. The demon blood inside Sam only makes it worse for him. But girls are taught to internalize their anger by society and when you do that, it causes anxiety and panic. Take all of canon Sam's anger, twist it into society's rules about women and how they're supposed to express emotion, and you get an emotional wreck. It only gets harder when you look at all the times Sam basically gets tied down/forced into something against his will - mostly notably the scene in Free to Be You and Me and Dean knocking him out and tying him to a chair when he finds out he doesn't have a soul. 
> 
> Then, uh, I just got mean. Like, really, really mean. I actually feel kind of guilty for torturing the poor characters this much. 
> 
> Also! I've noticed girl!Sam stories go one of two ways with her in Stanford: she's bisexual and goes out with Jess, or Jess and Brady get switched around. I decided to do neither and go the best friend route instead. 
> 
> Considering that this story actually hits all the important events in canon but seriously deviates at the same time, I hope this turned out all right.
> 
> One last thing: I asked my friend to pick an actress to use as girl!Sam so I had someone real for the French Mistake episode counterpart and she picked Emilia Clarke. If you don't know who that is, Emilia Clarke is Daenerys from Game of Thrones. Just check out what she looks like with her natural hair color.

When Sam was twelve, she had her first panic attack. That’s why Dad said she had to stay behind at the hotel while they go after a wraith who has a thing for teenage girls with anxiety, even though she’s eighteen and thinks she can handle it. She’s always been better with a gun in her hand than stuck worrying when he’ll come back, she argues, and Dean knows their dad doesn’t miss that he isn’t included.

It takes a week for them to find her. She’s in an abandoned asylum, and her clothes are torn to shreds.

“We’ve got you, Sammy,” Dean says quietly as he her gathers up, pulls the blindfold from her eyes, and does it alone because Dad’s busy putting a whole round of silver bullets into the thing’s chest. Sam clings with all she’s got and her body won’t stop shaking. “It can’t hurt you anymore.”

Then Dad’s here too, shoulders tense but touch gentler than Dean’s ever seen in his life when he strokes Sam’s hair. “Let’s get you out of here,” he says and Dean takes a glance at the wraith. It’s still in the form it took, a grocer from the supermarket half a street down from their motel. “We’re taking her to the hospital.”

Hospital for them is serious business, but this is a big deal. Sam doesn’t even react. Dean's shirt is already soaking through with blood. “She passed out.”

There’s blood running from her temple and onto her neck and he hadn’t checked for anywhere else. They’d made it there right before the kill. Traditionally, wraiths aren’t known for torture and this isn’t the first they’d gone up against. Sam was right; they should’ve let her come along. None of this would’ve happened if she’d been with them.

Once they get outside, Dad puts his hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be okay, Dean,” he tells her. “She always is.”

_She always is._

“I know, Dad.”

He manages not to say that’s part of the problem.

 

 

Though it had taken nearly a year to convince her, Sam eventually decided not to apply for college despite every high school guidance counselor telling her she should. She didn’t panic often but when did, Dean, and on occasion Dad or Bobby, were the only ones who knew how to calm her down. Though she doesn’t like to admit it, she knows it’s true since it’s not exactly like she can talk to a therapist or psychiatrist. Besides, she doesn’t want to hurt Dean, and doesn’t know what she’d do without him in the first place. Even when she said she _did_ want to apply, that was the one real problem nagging at the back of her mind. She knew he wouldn’t be happy with the whole situation.

But now it’s a lot more complicated. Dean knows it, too.

Barely out of the hospital, having just finished burning all the “How to Handle Rape Recovery” and “How to Help a Loved One Cope with Rape” pamphlets the psychiatric practitioner gave them (apparently they were fresh out of “How to Deal with Getting Yourself Kidnapped by a Wraith Like a Rookie” ones), when Dean comes over with her laptop and says, “You were going to miss the deadline the spring semester, so I filled a few out for you.”

The stitches on the inside of her elbow burn when she reaches out to take her computer from him. Two days ago she stopped taking her Vicodin, since it didn’t really seem to be working anyway. “Why?” she asks, and he takes a seat next to her, close but not touching.

I’m not made of glass, she wants to scream at him, but keeps it to herself.

“You’ve never liked hunting,” he says, and she flips though her emails, looks at the schools he applied to for her. They’re all the ones she said she wanted to go to in the beginning—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford. Ivy Leagues, basically. She had the credentials for it. “I mean, I’m not going to kid myself, you’ve always made sure I knew it. What’s the big deal with starting a semester late?”

“Dad won’t like this.”

“Since when do you care about what Dad thinks?”

“Since when _don’t_ you?”

She’s exhausted, has been ever since she woke up from the medically induced coma the hospital forced her into that kept her family there longer than they felt comfortable with. Now they’re gone, her signed out AMA, and she wonders if the doctors caught the fraud yet. Maybe they caught it right away and didn’t do anything. That’d happened before. Five foot two, heavily injured girls tend to melt hearts, she finds.

It’s not something she’s proud of, no matter how useful it can be.

When she lays her head on his shoulder, it takes him a moment to wrap his arm around her. Just because some wraith decided to use her for kicks doesn’t mean she needs to put her life entirely on hold—even though all those fucking pamphlets assume she will. But no, she’s a Winchester, and she’s pretty sure she’s lived through worse. Or so she tells herself. Life’s easier when you’re a liar.

After a moment, she says, “You’re right. I want to go. If we can afford it.”

“We’ll figure it out, Sammy.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

 

 

Dad says she isn’t allowed to go for her own protection, and Sam throws it back in his face that he hasn’t done a very good job with that lately. This is when Dean intervenes and says he’ll drive her to California.

A day later and they’re in her freshman dorm room, her window overlooking a parking lot and walls full of past puncture holes. Her roommate isn’t here yet. “Help me make the bed and I’ll let you sleep on it,” she says, turning around to look at her brother because after years of living out of motel rooms, she’s not very good at putting on sheets. It’s not like cleaning, which she’ll do anyway.

As he throws her the top sheet, he says, “What’s the alternative? You kick me out after I drove for a full day? That’s cold even for you, Sam.” She rolls her eyes and neither of them mention Dad just kicked her out for real, told her if she left not to come back, and Dean backed her up right in front of him. “So we’ve got you bed stuff, bathroom stuff, and you already picked out your classes, right? Anything else?”

When he said he’d help her, she hadn’t expected him to, well, actually _help._ She’s been such a mess since October that she’s genuinely surprised he hadn’t just dropped her off and driven back to Oklahoma. Still, while that might be the smart thing for him to do, she appreciates it. Right now she needs all the help she can get. “I think we’re good,” she answers, and tugs on the end of her braid. “I can get school supplies at the book store on campus.”

“We can find somewhere to eat, too. You know, before you’re stuck living on college crap and—”

“I’m not hungry.”

He shuts up and finishes making her bed while she folds her clothes. She has no padding for the mattress like most students do according to the packing list, but she doesn’t need it; she’s had worse. After a moment, he tells her anyway, “We’re going out for dinner, at least. Just because I’m sending you to college doesn’t mean I need to eat the cafeteria food too.”

 _Sending you to college._ Sam wonders if Dean even notices that sometimes he talks like he’s the parent instead of Dad. Probably not. If he did, he wouldn’t. Golden Boy of the family and all that.

“My roommate isn’t moving in until tomorrow,” she says, turning around to look at him, jacket half folded in her arms. “If she sees you sleeping with me, what do you want to say?”

He pauses midway through shaking the pillow into a pillowcase. When they started this relationship of theirs that really shouldn’t exist by societal standards and maybe even hers, too, he’d already been out of school. Unless they were around Dad or one of Dad’s friends, they never really had to hide it. Of course, after the incident with the wraith it’d taken her up to last week to finally even sleep in the same bed as him, but that’s beside the point. She’s getting better. Putting herself into a stable environment will help.

“If she sees us, we’ll say you’re my boyfriend,” she says before he can answer, and goes back to what she was doing. “If not, you’re my brother. I like you as my brother.”

With a slight nod, he agrees and they finish up in silence.

Jess doesn’t move in until dusk the next day, and misses Dean by an hour.

 

 

By the time Jessica Moore meets the mysterious Dean Winchester, she’s been best friends with her roommate for a little over a month. He’s a few inches taller than her, which leaves the considerably smaller Sam dwarfed between them, and the other girl almost slams the door in his face.

Before she can, he waltzes on in like he owns the place. “You must be Jess,” he says with the type of grin that makes her insides _melt._ God, when Sam said green eyes she wasn’t lying. “Sam’s told me a lot about you.”

Normally she isn’t the type to get all bugged out over a guy, but damn is he attractive. “Only good things I hope,” she answers, and glances behind him to her friend.

Her arms are crossed, mouth twisted to a scowl, and her whole body language radiates annoyance. “You were supposed to call ahead Dean,” she cuts in. “When I said I wanted you to meet my roommate, I didn’t mean _show up ten minutes before she had to leave for class._ ”

Oh, oh shit she forgot about that. Anthropology in a half hour with the most boring teacher in all of existence. Dean says, “I can stay all day, Sammy. Who cares when I show up?”

“I don’t know, me?”

Sammy. _No one_ calls her Sammy and since she’s a girl, people assume and try. They have a small group of friends—the two of them, Luis, Becky, and Brady—and everyone’s tried it at least once. In Luis’ case, twice. “We can all hang out tonight and order a pizza,” Jess says quickly, trying to defuse the tension because she’s pretty sure something else is going on here. “Maybe get a movie from Blockbuster?”

“See, Jess gets it.” Dean motions to her. “Loosen up a little, tiger. I’ll give you a call next time.”

Now, Jess is a psychology major and freshman year or not, she was able to swing taking two degree-related classes within her second semester, which doesn’t include the summer course she took before entering. And even without those, she’s pretty sure she’d be able to tell Dean was supposed to call about something more than showing up to meet her. Somehow, Jess just managed to walk herself into some sort of family drama. Then again, considering that Sam never talks about her family outside of “you should really meet my brother,” she’s not entirely surprised.

To break the awkward moment, she tells them, “I have to head to class. I promised my group we’d meet up.”

The lie’s transparent, but neither of them argue. “Movie night later,” Sam promises as Jess gathers her things for class and slips into her flip-flops.

“It was nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, you too, Dean.”

As she shuts the door, she hears Sam say, “A fucking ghost and no phone—” and she decides there are certain parts of her roommate’s life that she really doesn’t want to know.

 

 

Sam has a nightmare at two in the morning that Dean gets ripped apart by dogs she can’t see. “I’m sure he’s fine,” Jess tells her, rubbing her hand in circles around her back while Sam tries to stop hyperventilating. “If you call him now you’re just going to scare him.”

Black spots start appearing in the corners of her vision. Maybe she wouldn’t be so freaked if the light had worked when her roommate tried to turn it on. “I know,” she struggles to get out. “But—but—”

 Jess moves her arm so it wraps around her shoulders instead and she’s one of the few people Sam can handle touching her. There’d been a woman talking, but the words were jumbled and muted and it was one of _those_ dreams. “It’s just a dream,” her friend says. “Nothing can hurt either of you in a dream.”

Except that’s not true, she wants to say, because they’ve encountered monsters that can kill you in your sleep, but she can’t tell her that; Jess doesn’t know and she plans on keeping it that way. Sometimes she has dreams, though, were the sound goes kind of quiet but there’s a man and he has yellow eyes and their voices are the only ones that’re clear and this seemed like that type of dream but where was he, he’s usually there, why wasn’t—

“ _It’s only a haunted nursing home, Sam. I’m fine._ ”

Her phone’s pressed to her ear and she realizes she slipped into another panic attack. Jess usually calls Dean when it gets that bad, even though she spent the past ten minutes telling Sam not to. Good thing speaker’s not on, she thinks dully. After a moment, she says, “I know, I know,” and just hearing his voice is enough to start calming him down.

“ _You know, I’m only in Nevada. I can be there in a few hours if I leave now._ ”

Oh, great. Jess was right. There was no reason to call him. “No, I’m good. It was a stupid dream.”

“ _You sure? This is easy—I can call Bobby, pawn it off to someone else._ ”

Dad would be at least annoyed if he did that and he already doesn’t know they’re still in contact. He kicked her out, after all. “I’m sure. Finish up. I’ve got class all day.” Breathing’s coming easier now and she’s starting to feel tired again. “Look, I’m going to go. I’m keeping Jess awake.”

Her roommate shakes her head, but she doesn’t care. Dean says, “ _Call me tomorrow._ ”

“Okay.”

It’s been four months since the incident with the wraith. Jess probably didn’t tell him what the dream wasn’t about, which means he’ll assume it’s about that. Last time they saw each other was the first time he so much as kissed her since then and she wants to prove she got over it fine.

She doubts he’ll believe her anyway.

 

 

Towards the tail end of their sophomore year, Jess convinces Sam to get an apartment with her. Since she doesn’t have to pay for school outside of books and is now manager at her job at Anthropologie, she has money to spend on more than just school supplies and the occasional outfit from the store she works at, which she already has a discount for. Jess has money from her parents and a job in the makeup department at Bloomingdales and though she doesn’t have a full ride scholarship, together that’s enough to afford a relatively nice, two bedroom place and groceries when they need it.

Except that they quickly fall in love with an apartment that doesn’t quite fit their qualifications.

For normal occasions, Sam’s all about practicality, but right now it comes down to two places and she’s really preferring this one. Obviously Jess feels the same way because she says, “I know there’s only one bedroom, but this has a bay window and bigger bathroom.”

After already living together for two years, Sam had to make up excuses for the scars Jess inevitably saw and the few panic attacks she witnessed (for the most part it was the truth too, that she was the last victim in the Arizona Ripper case in 2001, but neglected to mention the whole wraith part), so it’s not like sharing a room’s an issue. They’re already comfortable enough with each other. And the only reason they decided to move out in the first place instead of continuing to live together was because the partying in dorms already annoyed them in the first place, but after Brady decided to turn into a drug addict this past fall, Jess finally called it quits and said she couldn’t deal with even hearing it anymore.

Sam didn’t exactly argue.

“It’s cheaper too,” she adds because she lived out motels all her life, so price means a lot to her. “And my job has one of those pillows sold specifically for sills like this.”

Growing up a hunter means she can be pretty spontaneous sometimes, but the same can’t be said for Jess. So it’s a bit surprising when her friend turns to the agent after only twenty minutes in the apartment, giant smile on her face. “We’ll take it.”

By June, they’ve moved in. Within two days, they’ve got the whole place decorated. Sam wishes she’d started acting girly a little earlier in life because this is a lot of fun, she finds.

 

 

Even though breaking into his sister’s apartment at two am isn’t the best idea he’s ever had, he does it anyway. She grabs him by the arm before he can even make it across the room and forces him onto the couch.

“What’ve I told you about calling?” she says quietly, and sits on his lap so he can’t get up. “Jess is sleeping.”

He should’ve called. Really, he knows this, but he hasn’t been thinking straight since the voicemail. “It’s not important,” he answers. “Look, Sam, Dad hasn’t been in home in a few days. I need your help.”

Even though he can’t see her face, he’s pretty sure she just rolled her eyes. “Good for him, Dean. Like this hasn’t happened before.”

“No, Sam, Dad’s on a _hunting_ trip and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”

From around the corner comes the sound of footsteps and Sam jumps off him in time for Jess to turn on the lights. Apparently his sister’s pajamas tonight are a pair of shorts and the shirt he thought he’d lost, which means she stole it. After they find Dad, he’s reminding her that she should at least tell him before she takes his clothes. Brat.

Jess takes in the sight of them and sighs. “You know, Dean, normal people use the door. And knock.”

“He says it’s an emergency.”

“Our Dad’s missing. It is an emergency.”

Leaning against the doorway, she says, “Well, next time you have an emergency, at least give your sister a head’s up. Sam’s been checking her phone every five minutes.”

Yeah, he doesn’t doubt it, but he honestly hadn’t known there wouldn’t be cell phone service. If he had, he wouldn’t have taken the case. Maybe if he hadn’t taken the case, Dad wouldn’t have gone missing or he at least would’ve been able to pick up the phone. This whole situation is Hell already and he’s not in the mood to get into an argument with Sam. Usually having Jess around can cut some of the tension because they can’t really talk (which also thankfully avoids a lot of Chick Flick Moments), but this is different. He needs to talk to her alone.

Sam beats him to it. “Jess, you can go back to sleep. Dean and I are going outside.”

Glancing between the two of them, she asks, “I know you said your Dad’s missing and all, but are you okay?”

“We’re fine,” he answers, and puts his hand between the sister’s shoulder blades, already steering her towards the door. “I promise next time I’ll use the door.”

Though she looks wary, Jess turns off the light again and leaves as they exit, taking a quick walk downstairs. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” Sam says. “Dad’s always missing and he’s always fine. Who knows? Maybe he was trying to call you but you weren’t answering your phone. You _always_ answer your phone.”

“Jesus Christ, it was an accident.” She gives a small huff of annoyance and he pops the truck so he can show her the details because fuck it, he’s taking her with him. It’s been nearly four damn years, she’s still in shape, and Dad’s missing. “Look, I got back and went straight for—”

“Got back from where?”

Even though he knows she won’t like this, he answers, “I had my own gig down in New Orleans.”

Sam slaps him and honestly, he’d forgot those hurt worse than her punches. “The entire area’s still in recovery and you decided to take a case? And expected _cell phone service?_ ”

“It was a mistake.”

“You’re a fucking idiot, Dean.” She crosses her arms and shakes her head. “We’ll argue about this when it’s not two in the morning. What’s going on with Dad? If your definition of missing is not picking up his phone, then you also went on a hunting trip and hadn’t been home for a few days.”

He pretends he doesn’t hear the jab and explains. Until the voicemail she doesn’t seem convinced, but she straightens up after that, says there’s EMF, and lets him explain the missing persons reports. On one hand his sister’s the most stubborn person alive, but on the other she can be pretty easy to bend sometimes. This time he hadn’t expected it to be this quick.

After she mentions the interview on Monday morning, he tells her to skip it. “I can’t,” she says, halfway back to the steps. “It’s for law school and I know you want me to start hunting again, but I don’t, so it’s my whole future on a plate.”

 Damn straight he wants her hunting with him again, but she just said no arguing at two in the morning. He’s stayed with her all through college and there are some days she barely fits in _here._ Does she really think she can do the same thing in the real world? She’s the one who said herself that she was better with a gun in her hand, and he’s the one who should’ve listened.

Still. It’s two in the morning.

Fifteen minutes later and she’s back downstairs, backpack thrown over her shoulder and dressed in jeans and a button down. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come up,” she says, throwing her pack into the trunk. “Jess kept asking me if I was sure you’re okay.”

“Aw, she cares.”

“Shut up, jerk.”

“Make me, bitch.”

 They close the car doors and she leans over to kiss him as he turns to tell her it’ll be about three hours to get there. “No more not telling me where you’re going,” she says. “Dad might be missing, but you’re the one who made me worry.”

He bites back an apology because they’re moving dangerously close to sappy levels right about now and it’s too early for this shit. “How about we go find Dad and hash this out over a great round of sex and one of those girly coffee things you like?”

She doesn’t point out that she _is_ a girl for once. “Deal,” she answers, and he puts the car in drive.

 

 

She convinces Dean to stay the night so he can at least get in some sleep before driving off to Colorado.

He doesn’t expect to relive watching Mom burn on the ceiling.

Sam’s a ragdoll in his arms.

It takes a week for him to stop smelling Jess’ burning curls.

 

 

When Laurie and Steve Moore find Samantha in the park, she’s alone and just getting off the phone. “It was my one of my professors,” she says with a strained smile. “She said I can email me in my work for the rest of the year if I want to stay enrolled.”

Laurie always thought Sam was a bit of an odd girl and she knows even Jessica agreed. The first time they had her over for Thanksgiving, their daughter gave them a list of things they weren’t allowed to talk about. Abuse, is the family theory, because of how tense she gets whenever someone mentions parents. She’s been through so much and now, according to the police detective, she had to watch her best friend die.

Before anyone can say anything, Laurie gathers her into a hug. “You should,” she tells her, because in her grief, she worries as she’s now a mother with no one to worry for, and knows Sam already had another teacher offer a similar bargain and she can drop two classes and still graduate.

“Jess would’ve wanted you to go for your degree,” Steve adds.

Sam sniffles and wipes her eyes with the back of one hand like a child. “Yeah, I know,” she says and her eyes dart around. Jessica used to talk about them finishing their advanced degrees and moving to New York together. Sometimes she and her husband wondered if something else was going on. “I can’t stay he—I’ll have to go back to South Dakota.”

As Steve tries to touch her shoulder, she shies away and looks down. To cover up the moment, he says, “Well, you always have a place with us if you need it.”

“I’ll be with my brother.”

Earlier this morning they finally met Dean. Jess liked him. The father went unmentioned, not the brother. “I know you’re leaving today, but you’re always welcome to call.”

Sam starts crying, then—really crying for the first time she’s seen—causing Laurie to start crying too and she wraps her arms around her. When Steven joins in, she’s hit by this sudden, absolute feeling that this is the last time they’ll ever see each other.

 

 

Blackwater Ridge is cold even with all her layers, so Dean gives her his jacket as she protests she can survive without it. Across the protective circle, Haley and the guide watch them warily and the little brother slumps in on himself with a stilted sort of misery that only comes from not knowing where your sibling is. Sam knows the feeling. She knows grief too, and really hopes for their sake Tommy’s still alive.

At some point later, when Dean is off arguing with Mr. Expert Opinion again, Haley asks her, “So are you two together?”

She fingers the edge of her brother’s jacket. They’ve barely touched since Jess was killed. “Yeah,” she answers, watching him move in the long shadows of the sunset. “Yeah, we are.”

Haley’s eyes track Dean too and Sam feels too numb to be jealous. “Do you usually do this? Go around drawing shapes in the ground to protect people from evil?”

“When we have to.”

It’s a bad answer, but she’s not up for talking. Across the clearing, Dean shakes his head and walks away, heading back over to them. Everyone here thinks they’re crazy, she’s spent years chasing normal, and can’t find it in her to give a damn about anything.

For the moment, at least, that’s just wonderful.

 

 

Even though Sam had spent a good time laughing at him for his fear of flying and then spent a while being angry about Dad’s new voicemail, he knew the moment was coming. “Pull over,” she says right on cue, hands gripping at the fabric of her jeans. “Dean, I need you to pull over.”

But he’s already on the shoulder of a mostly deserted road by the time she finishes speaking and she throws the door open, undoing her seatbelt and swinging her legs around so she’s facing the outside. Her breathing’s already erratic, so Dean gets out too and circles around the car to stand in front of him. “It knew about Jess.” Her words are already coming out too fast, and she talks quick to begin with. “The demon said—he said—”

Dean takes hold of her upper arms. “Demons will say anything,” he tells her, repeating the lesson Dad taught them over and over. “It just knew it would do this to you.”

Except she’s already caught too deep in “this” to really listen to him now and slumps forward, head on his shoulder. “She’s gone and it’s all my fault, Dean. It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” Ever since she was a kid she’d get like this. It hasn’t gotten any easier with age.

“Yes, it—you don’t need to—” She clings to him so hard it actually hurts and he knows he’s leaving bruises on her arms. “She tells me when I sleep—I don’t want to sleep. Don’t make me sleep, Dean.”

When he tries to pull them apart, she just grips him tighter. “Sam, look at me,” he say, and she doesn’t. “Sam, they’re just dreams. We talked about—”

“Please don’t make me. Please, please, please—” She’s breathing too fast and shallow to be  okay; he’s making her worse. “ _Dean._ ”

“I won’t make you,” he lies. “As long as I’m around, nothing’s going to hurt you.”

That feels like a lie, too.

 

 

The first time she had a dream about Jessica burning, she woke up screaming. The only other time she’d done that was their sophomore year when she stood in a church with the yellow-eyed man who told her she’d save the world one day. Her roommate had been there in an instant and Sam convinced her, even through her blind panic where she continued to see those curls burning every time she blinked, not to call Dean. That she could handle it.

Every night after that, she had the same dream. But she didn’t wake up screaming again.

Hurt flickers across her brother’s face when she says there are some secrets she can’t share, but he holds back a comment. Instead he takes a wet wash cloth and starts cleaning off her face as she cleans off his. “You pull a stunt like that again and I’ll kill you myself,” he says bluntly as he gets directly beneath her eye. She’s having trouble seeing, which isn’t a good sign.

“At least I didn’t beat the shit out of a couple of cops,” she answers because she knows she _will_ pull something like that again. She’s Samantha Winchester, it’s inevitable. Everyone at Stanford treated her like she was some sort of genius, but Dean knows the truth—she’s actually a fucking idiot most days. “You’re lucky they didn’t wake up.”

“I’ve taken out a lot worse than a few humans, Sammy.”

She puts down her wash cloth. “Don’t joke about that.”

As he scrubs at a particularly caked on bit of dried blood, he answers, “Lighten up. Case closed, girl saved, few broken mirrors. Our luck can’t get any worse, can it?”

He doesn’t get it, and she pushes his hand out of the way. “They were cops, not a couple guys at the bar accusing you of cheating on a pool game, Dean.”

“Yeah, I don’t like knocking out humans either, but they would’ve made our job a Hell of a lot harder.” When he hands her the wash cloth and backs away, she doesn’t stop him. “Finish cleaning up, I’m going to uncover the mirrors so we can get out of dodge as fast as we can.”

“Dean—”

“Drop it, Sam.”

They don’t say a word for the next half hour.

 

 

Before Dean Winchester can put almost a full round of bullets into the very real shapeshifter’s back, Becky’s exposed to a sight she’d really rather never have to see—the girl she thought she knew pinned down with her arms over her head by something wearing her brother’s face.

Her eyes are closed but she manages to knee the thing in the stomach just as Dean pulls the trigger. Even though Becky knows it’s probably not what either of them want, she gets there first.

When she touches Sam’s shoulder, the other girl opens her eyes. “Are you okay?” she asks immediately, but her voice sounds hollow. There’s blood dripping from her cheek and left palm. “Did it hurt you?”

Becky shakes her head because she’s traumatized, but it’s true; it knocked her out with a pressure point and tied her up. At first she thought that meant something even worse, but looking at Sam’s ripped up and disheveled clothes, she knows it doesn’t matter. “I’m going to get a medical kit,” she says.

Dean’s over here too now and tells her, “Don’t call the police yet,” before kneeling down next to his sister and saying, “It’s just me—real me, this time.”

As Becky leaves the room, she takes another glance at the dead body and hears Sam say, “I cut my hand.”

She doesn’t hear the answer, but when she’s back a minute later with the first aid kit and bottled water for the three of them, Dean’s lifting his sister up like she’s made of nothing and placing her on the pool table. The knife she must’ve cut her hand on is still stabbed into the wood and blood’s dripping down the blade. Even though the sight makes her sick, she holds down the feeling. Somehow, that’s worse than the dead body in the corner.

Then she gets a really good look at Sam. “You should go to the hospital,” she says because there’s no way a first aid kit can cover this sort of damage. Her friend is shirtless now and there aren’t many cuts, but the bruises make her think that…monster did a lot more damage than it looks. “I can bring you since Dean’s, well, wanted by the police.”

“Not anymore. Show them the body and I’ll be considered dead.” He shakes his sister’s shoulder lightly. “Hey, Sammy. Hospital.”

Though she doesn’t answer right away, she eventually says, “No hospital.”

The way she says it reminds Becky, almost laughably, of the way she’d turn down offers to go out to bars and hook up with guys. Dean says, “We can call the police and I can bring you to a place out of town.”

Even though Becky already knew she’d have to deal with the cops on her own, she doesn’t want to. “He’s right, Sam,” she says to her friend as Dean peels off his jacket to put it around her shoulders. “You need medical help.”

Her brother was a pre-med major at Stanford. Now his future might be ruined forever.

Sam catches Dean’s hand before he can move it away and looks up at him. “I don’t want to be put in a coma.”

“This isn’t like last time.”

“I kept burning pamphlets.”

Becky might not be Jess, with her fancy psychology degree, but she knows enough to connect the dots and really almost does get sick when Dean says, “At least let me bring you to a damn clinic.”

Finally Sam agrees with something. He picks her up again and Becky calls the police. When her friend forgets to say goodbye, she isn’t offended.

 

 

The clinic says she’s okay and the damage looks worse than it is.

He calls Dad, leaves a voicemail, and refrains from throwing his phone at the wall.

 

Sam’s on the floor of a crappy motel bathroom, bleeding darkness out of her arms as the yellow eyed man stands in the doorway. She’s had this dream a thousand times before.

“We’re been over this, Samantha,” he says, coming over to crouch in front of her. “Just because you’re different doesn’t make you bad. You’re _special._ ”

She blinks and looks down at her arms. This is a dream, and she doesn’t remember cutting them open. “I felt you,” she says, still focusing on her arms. “Missouri said evil leaves scars. We’re hunting you.”

He grins and her vision almost phases out from blood loss, even if this isn’t real. “Knew you’d figure out eventually, Sammy girl,” he says and taps at her nose. Her reflexes are too slow to catch his hand.

“Get out of my head,” she tells him and his smile grows.

“We’ll see each other soon,” he answers, and when he touches her shoulder he leaves a bloody handprint.

Then he’s gone, and she wakes up choking on the imagined smell of sulfur.

 

 

“I was wrong. I can’t do this.”

Over the past few days, Sam kept insisting she’d be fine to take the case, that it’d be years since the incident with the wraith, and even managed to go so far as to make it inside the old asylum. But the moment they stumble across what looks like an old operating room, her entire body stiffens and Dean knows trusting her on this was a mistake.

He takes her by the arm and leads her a little ways away from the girl. “We aren’t locked in yet,” he says, keeping his voice low so the chick won’t hear and his sister’s panic won’t come at such a slow build. “We can take the chick and go.”

Her breathing’s starting to get faster again so he pulls her to him and thinks about what an idiot he is, that you can’t bring a person who suffers from panic attacks and once got tortured in an abandoned asylum into another abandoned asylum filled with insane ghosts. She’s probably lit up like a beckon for whatever’s haunting this place right now and he shouldn’t have listened to her.

“But the—”

“Katherine, we need to leave,” he says, twisting to look at the other girl, and feels his sister shutter. God, he thinks, please tell me she isn’t crying. So much for being good at keeping her stable. “And I mean now.”

Even as Katherine insists that her boyfriend’s still in here, she follows them, and Sam clings to him the whole ten minutes it takes to get out of the haunted wing. As he hands his sister his car keys, he says, “When you calm down, bring her home. Then go wait at the motel for me,” and she won’t stop trembling. Still, getting out seems to have cut the worst of the panic attack before it could even start.

“You’re going after the kid?” Her eyes are dry but her voice cracks anyway.

 He kisses her forehead because he doesn’t trust her to take much else but really doesn’t want to go back in alone. She lived it and he doesn’t even try to imagine what that was like, but he’s the one who found her; abandoned asylum don’t exactly give him the warm and fuzzies either. “Did this for four years by myself,” he reminds her. “I’ll be fine. Just stick by your phone.”

When she nods without arguing, still shaking and hugging herself now that he’s backing away from her, he knows he really fucked up and she’s barely keeping it below the surface.

 

           

They get into a fight over Dad and Dean leaves her on the side of the road. It doesn’t take long for a girl in a small white Mazda to pull up next to her as she tries to call her brother for the fifth time.

Never trust strangers is the first lesson any kid learns, but Sam’s pretty sure if this chick turns out to be a psycho she can take her easy. “Thanks,” she says, getting into the passenger seat after the girl offers her a ride. “Sam.”

“Meg.” Meg has short blonde hair and isn’t much taller than her, she’s guessing. They shake hands. “So where can I take you, Sam?”

Five months in the past, she wants to say but doesn’t. “Just the next town, if that’s okay. It doesn’t matter where.”

As she pulls back out onto the road, Meg asks, “So how’d you end up here? It didn’t look intentional.”

“My brother and I got into a fight.” It’s more honest than she usual is, but she’s mad and annoyed and maybe even a little scared.

Meg glances at her, eyes off the road like Dean does. “Must be some brother.”

“It’s normally not like this.” She sighs and leans her head against the window, watching the scenery go by. How long until the next town? She says, “What about you? Where are you going?”

“California,” the other girl answers and they pass a cop lurking on the shoulder of the country highway. “I’m taking a road trip.”

A road trip sounds nice—a real one, Sam means, not one where she finds herself fighting monsters every day and having panic attacks because she thought she could handle it. Dean had been walking on egg shells around her since the incident with the shifter (though she doesn’t blame him, even if she doesn’t like it), which slowly started annoying her more and more until Dad’s text was turned into a catalyst for a fight. A fight so bad he left her on the side of the road and isn’t picking up his phone, despite promising her he always would.

Maybe he’s injured, says a small voice in the back of her mind, and thought makes her feel worse than she already does.

“Alone?” Then she realizes what she said and quickly adds, “Sorry, that was nosy.”

Meg shrugs and smiles. It’s been a long time since Sam’s sat down and talked with a girl. “Don’t worry about it,” she answers. “And yes, alone. I needed to get away from my family for a little while. I love them, but they want too much for me. I’m supposed to be smart, but not smart enough to scare away a husband. Quiet and well behaved, but this is Twenty First Century America. I can be smart and extroverted if I want.”

As they pass a sign for Snappy Tomato Pizza Co., in Hope, Indiana, Sam tells her, “I kind of get it. You know the brother I told you about? We’re road tripping too. For the most part we’re good, but…I don’t know. It’s like he expects me to want to do the same things he wants to do. So we got into a fight. I’ve been trying to call him, but he isn’t picking up.” Just because she said they should look for Dad didn’t mean she wanted to be left in the middle of nowhere. The fact that the nearest town is called Hope is a touch of irony she doesn’t appreciate.

With a slight head shake, the other girl says, “Families. Can’t lives without them, but they drive you crazy. Want to get a slice of pizza?”

Trusting people isn’t normally something Sam does, but there’s something about Meg she can’t put her finger on. They spend a while in the oddly named pizza parlor together that reminds her a bit too much of the one of campus, complaining about families and expectations and the downward spiral found on television these days. Run away with me to California, Meg says at one point, which Sam thinks isn’t entirely sure is a joke, and it isn’t until then that she realizes it’s nightfall and her brother still hasn’t called her back and angry at her or not, he really should’ve.

When they part ways, Meg gives her a hug and she catches the faint smell of sulfur. Though unsettled, she ignores it, and it isn’t until later that she finds out she really shouldn’t have.

 

 

When she finds out Dean’s supposedly going to die in a month, she has a panic attack so bad the doctors send a therapist from the psychiatric wing to talk to her.

He’s not going to die, she keeps thinking as the woman talks. I’m not going to let him.

“There is no one else,” she says when Dr. Mills asks because Dad doesn’t count, doesn’t answer his phone, apparently doesn’t _care_ —and Sam meant to hold it together for her brother’s sake, but her hands are trembling and she’s crying messy. “H-he’s all I have.”

Mills nods, sympathetic, but it can’t be all that genuine; she sees cases like this all day. “I’m sorry, what’s your relationship to him again?”

“Fiancée.” It makes more sense for a couple to be living together than brother and sister and she could be as affectionate as she wants without any weird looks. Again, Mills nods. “Can I go see him now?”

“He’s still unconscious, Samantha.”

“I don’t care. He needs me to be there when I wake up.”

And of course she does, doesn’t this woman see it? Because Dean can’t wake up alone in a place like this where everything is sterile and white and they both hate hospitals but Sam won’t stop shaking and she doesn’t want to be the one comforted. All she wants is him, and according to everyone, he won’t be here in a month and the only person she’ll have left is an absent father who won’t pick up his phone.

I won’t let him die, she thinks again, and means it.

 

 

After he’s right and healthy again, they barely make it back to the motel room before he gets Sam pressed against the wall. He’s got one hand tangled in her hair, the other slipped under her shirt, and hates how long it takes them both to get undressed.

This time it’s rushed and desperate with little build up and Sam’s soft breaths and quiet moans sound too close to sobs.

 

 

“You’re not going to turn out like Max.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I won’t let it happen.”

 

 

When Greg described his girlfriend, Kathy was expecting about what she found—a girl small enough to almost fully lie down in the damn cages they were placed in, and every bit as innocent looking as she is in the picture. The file gave further info too, that she graduated Stanford after being the last and only surviving victim of the Arizona Ripper and her brother was a serial killer who California cops now speculate killed her old roommate and forced her along with him. With all that in mind, Kathy’s surprised to find Samantha Winchester seems more…irritated than anything else while she lies there fiddling with a metal object.

Her hands are scrapped up and bloody and that has to be painful. She doesn’t seem to notice, which makes Kathy wonder if something more recent than the Arizona Ripper got to her.

“I bet he got himself caught,” she says at one point, voice cutting through the stale air of the basement. It smells like old hay, like the days she’d got to Uncle George’s farm and he’d be cleaning out the horse’s stables. “I mean, he’ll be fine, but still. That means someone else will have to come down and get us.”

She’s sitting up with her back to the metal grating, legs stretched out in front of her. “If you’re right,” Kathy answers, “and since it’s taking so long I’m guessing you are, then how do you know they won’t just shoot us here?”

Holding up the metal thing, Sam says, “They’ll come for me first because I was here first. I’ve been down here long enough to realize they’re too stupid to know what to do if I throw something unexpected at their faces.”

Before Kathy can say anything, one of the men comes down holding the rifle. She thinks she really shouldn’t be so surprised that Sam Winchester’s plan worked out exactly as she said it would.

 

 

So this is the thing about the Winchesters: Sam’s essentially her sister, since she’s the only one with shared blood that matters to Father, the girl’s useless without her brother, and can get over her dad easily enough.

Meg creates a trap for John and lets Sam and Dean get away with little more than cuts and bruises. They don’t realize what’s coming for them yet, but that won’t last very long. She can’t wait to see the fallout.

 

 

“Yeah, Sam, actually it is a pretty big deal!”

With a tone of complete, irritatingly obvious disbelief, his sister says, “You were nine. Sorry if I’m not holding you accountable for acting your age. Dad shouldn’t have left us alone in the first place.”

Nineteen years later and he never told her this for a reason. “I knew what was out there, Sam. Had for a full year by then,” he tells her, but she doesn’t look convinced. “I knew he was hunting something that went after young, young kids in the area and I left you alone.”

“You were a kid too, it would’ve gone after you if you were there!”

“Dad told me how to scare it off.”

“ _You were nine._ He should’ve given the case to someone without kids. We were practically bait.”

His hands ball into fists at his sides. “Don’t say shit like that, Sam.”

But she just shakes her head and grabs her jacket off her chair. “I’m going for a walk,” she says before adding, voice sarcastic, “Let’s hope twenty-two is old enough to keep me safe.”

The door shuts with a slam and he forgets sometimes how much of a bitch his sister can be.

 

 

Sam’s spent years trying to cut a darkness outside of her in her dreams while a man with yellow eyes told her there was nothing wrong with her, that she wasn’t evil, but special. Right now she’s really glad she didn’t believe him or this would be a hundred times more disappointing than it already is.

As she tries to go back inside, Dean catches her around the waist. “Let me go,” she says, but his grip around her is tighter than she’s used to.

“I’m going to let you just run in their to sacrifice yourself!”

The demon upstairs evaporates into nothing and she buries her face into her brother’s shoulder. He smells like smoke and missed opportunities and not at all like sulfur.

 

 

“Sam, you have to calm down.” His daughter’s half kneeling between him and his son and John’s not even sure she heard him. Usually this is Dean’s job, but he’s bleeding out on the floor to her right and if he’d just thought about it more—well, he’s been shot in the leg by Sam now, so he’s stuck relying on her if they’re ever going to get out of here. “Sammy, look at me.”

She does, which is about the first good break he’s had since he walked in her, but her eyes are huge and she’s not quite breathing, which makes her look more like the little girl who would stay awake for days waiting for him to come home instead of the one he’s been seeing since he found out about the demon blood. “I can’t,” she starts to say before covering her mouth and looking at Dean. “Oh god, how am I supposed to—”

“Sam!” Her back stiffens, but she doesn’t look at him and he knows he’ll have to risk it because he’s got a bullet in his leg, demons after them, his son bleeding out, and his antichrist daughter shaking so hard it’s amazing she hasn’t passed out. God fucking dammit, she should’ve got him when she had the chance. “Grab the car keys, bring the Impala around front.”

“B-but—”

“ _Sam._ ”

Even though it looks like it’s a struggle, she scrambles to get the car keys from Dean’s pocket and he knows it’s practically murder, putting Sam behind the wheel when she gets like this (he’s the one who made up the firm _no driving_ rule, after all), but he doesn’t see another option here. Then she’s gone, his son groans in pain, and he waits in silence.

 

 

Dean has the car to fix up to get over his father, but Sam has nothing, and makes it her mission instead to clean and organize his entire house. Normally Bobby would be annoyed, but she hasn’t eaten in three days, her hands are scrubbed raw by cleaning products, and her eyes are still dry. It’s downright heartbreaking, but he knows to leave her be. As usual, her brother’s easier to understand.

But after a while, he decides enough is enough and forces her into a kitchen chair. “You’re not getting up until you finish eating,” he tells her, putting a sandwich and some chips in front of her. “Got that?”

She glances from the food to him. “You know I’m twenty-three, right?”

“So? That don’t mean I can’t make sure you keep healthy.”

For a moment, she just stares at the sandwich and he thinks maybe he won. Then, “Can I bring this out to Dean? He’s been working all day.”

Bobby sighs. “ _Eat_ , Sam. Then you can make something to bring out to your brother. I have to go finish up something for Rufus.”

“Do you want help? When I’m done.”

“’Course. You know where I’ll be.”

He pats her on the shoulder and feels her collarbone through her clothes.

 

 

Even though Ellen likes the kids well enough right off the bat, that doesn’t mean she has to like the way Jo’s eyeing that boy. If Dean Winchester’s anything like his father, then her daughter deserves a Hell of a lot better, and even if he’s a much better man than that she doesn’t like the way he and his sister look at each other.

Still, it isn’t her place to ask. Or judge.

When they enter the bar with the case solved, they’re laughing, which is better than when they first met. “You’re the only hunter I know who’s more afraid of clowns than demons, Sammy,” Dean’s saying as he pushes open the door and Jo glances her way, one eyebrow quirked, but it’s not like Ellen has an answer either. Neither of them looks much like John.

“Well, you’re afraid of planes.”

“Yeah, well planes kill people.”

“Apparently clowns kill people, too.”

Sam scowls and Dean laughs and when they take seats at the bar, Ellen asks, “How’d it go?”

Before her brother can say anything, Sam answers, “Fine. It was the blind knife thrower,” and Jo stares on adoringly already. Ellen wonders how her daughter doesn’t notice the way the Winchester’s hands and legs keep brushing up against each other because twenty-four isn’t, in the grand scheme of things, all that young. “Thanks for all the help, Ellen.”

“Yeah, really,” Dean adds, “would’ve taken a lot longer than an overnight to finish without you. Do you know if Ash is done?”

Ash is done, of course, just like he said he’d be, and the Winchesters join him at one of the corner tables. Ellen watches Jo, who watches Dean, and the two siblings stand closer than is entirely appropriate.

 

 

From the moment she first lays eyes on him, Gordon makes Sam uncomfortable, but Dean’s still in the heavy grieving phase where nothing she says matters. It hurts (quite literally), but hey, it isn’t the first time she’s gotten hit in the face for it.

She’s right in the end, though, and gets a cut in the arm and Gordon’s eyes still crawling her body when she leaves with Lenore. “He won’t hurt you guys anymore,” Sam says as she passes her off to the other vampire—Eli, she’s pretty sure his name is.

Lenore groans. “How can you be sure?” he asks, and his voice is practically a growl. Neither seems particularly bothered by the blood dripping down her arm and she wonders if that means something.

From inside comes a loud crash. “Dean took care of it,” she answers.

Eli doesn’t thank her when they leave and Lenore’s still too sick with dead man’s blood to speak, but Sam’s relieved with this whole exchange anyway. She’s always felt _wrong_ somehow and lately everything’s pointing to her going dark side, but if a nest of actual monsters can stay good, doesn’t that mean she can too?

Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

She really hopes it isn’t.

 

 

“Sammy, I didn’t mean—”

“I understand, Dean. Andy got inside your head.”

“No, but—”

“I’m fine. Drop it.”

Her eyes are large and pleading. How can he say no to that? Apologizing was never his strong suit, anyway.

 

 

At first Jo only hears them talking the case, so that’s what she expects to see, but it’s not the sight she walks it.

Because, well, yeah, they’re discussing the case all right, but Sam’s got herself in Dean’s lap with her laptop balancing on his knees and his hands are…somewhere. From her vantage point, she can’t see everything, but she’s pretty sure she’s seeing enough.

Just before she decides to say fuck it and runs off to find a different case that has nothing to do with them, she hears Sam laugh and say, “Dean, stop. I’m _working._ ”

Mom must’ve known. Why the fuck didn’t she warn her?

 

 

Samantha’s not a suspect for anything. Even after a couple of minutes with the girl Diana can see that, but that tidbit of knowledge doesn’t seem to help calm her down.

“He never hurt her, she was our friend,” Samantha insists and that’s when her hand without the cast start trembling to the point it would be noticeable even if you weren’t look for it. “My brother wouldn’t—”

 _Last and only surviving victim of William “Arizona Ripper” McKinley_ , her file reads. _Medical records show evidence of physical torture and rape._

She was signed out of the hospital AMA by her family before she could receive psychiatric attention.

Diana gets her water instead of coffee.

“If you’re in trouble, Samantha—”

But she’s already shaking her head. “It’s not like that, he wouldn’t hurt me, he _wouldn’t._ ” She pauses, looks like she’s going to cry but doesn’t, and her voice cracks when she says, “Can I see him?”

For the first time in years, Diana actually leaves the investigation room without answering first.

 

 

Honestly, Dean almost does it, though he’ll never tell a soul. He almost lifts the gun to shoot her because all he’ll do is shoot himself after. They’ll go out, Romeo and Juliet style.

Together, or not at all.

Also, they’ve got a relationship that’s half brother/sister and half boyfriend/girlfriend and it isn’t based much on saying _I love you_. Still, he has to bite back from saying it. In the state she’s in, she probably doesn’t want to hear it. Whatever’s crawling inside her is a demon’s virus and they’re already sick of seeing the wrong sort of eyes. Would’ve been after one time. No times.

“I had a dream once my eyes turned black,” she says quietly, eventually. “Please, Dean, just give me the gun and leave.”

Before he can say anything, there’s a knock on the door. It’s the doctor, and Sam’s fine. Of course, he thinks. Of course she fucking is.

 

 

That night he wakes up from a dream where his sister has yellow eyes and checks to make sure they’re blue for the rest of the day. Even though it makes him a bad brother, he has to make sure.

 

 

Sam’s okay with dying, has been since she was young and first felt the uncleanness crawling under her skin, but she doesn’t want it to happen like this.

After they reunite, after she’s drunk on not much alcohol because she’s a woman who doesn’t weigh a lot and forgot to eat more than breakfast that day, she tells Dean, “Kill me. You have to promise you’ll kill me. It needs to be you.”

When she wakes up, she’s still in her jeans. She wishes it could be anyone but him.

 

 

Right after Victor was assigned the Winchesters, he talked to everyone who’d been in contact with them. For the most part everyone had been infuriatingly vague, but sometimes he got a hit. And when he got a hit, they usually matched up.

It happened in specific places—an asylum, but no surprise there, a visit to “an old friend,” a small town, Chicago—where Dean will solve something and he’ll leave Sam alone to panic. Sometimes people are surprised when he says they’re brother and sister instead of dating. Though the main cop in the last place that caught them won’t say much, others in the station who knew the situation said Samantha wasn’t charged with anything. After he shares his theory with his partner, Reid agrees without hesitation and Victor hadn’t thought it was possible to hate Dean Winchester anymore than he already did.

“Yes, I know about Sam too,” he says as an experiment, “the Bonnie to your Clyde,” and Winchester actually says it’s true.

Victor vows to catch this man if it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

 

 

“I was awake for almost all of it,” Sam says after everything is done, curled up into herself with her cheek is still stringing and her body aching and Dean isn’t touching her, which means he feels bad for hitting her again. “She kept saying she needed to show me you wouldn’t do it.”

Just like he won’t touch her, she won’t look at him. “Do you know what she stopped you from seeing?” he asks and all she wants to do is sleep.

“Everything that hurt,” she says, voice quiet because this feels more private than she thought it would. “I think it was her idea of kindness.”

Dean doesn’t have an answer for this, and she hadn’t expected him to.

 

 

Dean always wanted Mom to be alive. It was the wish he kept to himself. But he never expected it to become true, for one thing, and for another, he never expected the consequences.

Right now it’s Dad’s birthday dinner and he’s got Amanda Heckerling at his side saying she’s his wife. Sam’s not here yet, he assumes, before he catches sight of the photos on the bookshelf and lining the wall. There’s his school pictures, one of him graduating high school, graduating Stanford, his parent’s wedding, his wedding, the picture he has in his wallet in the reality only he seems to know about except with no one holding a little baby girl. Amanda calls him over, says they have an announcement.

Both his parents are beaming when she says she’s pregnant. “Have you picked out a name?” Mom asks.

“Sam,” Dean says, and it has nothing to do with the imaginary baby. “Sammy.”

This can’t be a wish, or some sort of good dream. It’s a nightmare instead.

 

 

When the Yellow-Eyed Demon stands in the doorway, stepping over salt lines, no one seems to notice. They’re talking, but it’s muffled.

I think we should listen to Sam, Andy says, and she crosses her arms.

“I told you to stay out of my dreams.”

Somewhere behind her, Jake answers, What makes her such an expert?

The Demon pulls up a chair and sits down across from her. “Good to see you aren’t bleeding for once. Ready to accept you’re special?”

“What’s wrong with me?”

With a sigh, he says, “Nothing’s wrong with you, Sammy, my girl.”

She holds back the usual _only Dean gets to call me that._ “Fine,” she says, giving in, because she wants answers. “What makes me so special?”

Trust me, man, she saved my life.

Then the room shifts and they’re standing in the nursery of her old house. In the crib a baby is crying and from pictures, she recognizes the girl as her. A mobile swings above her head and a baby monitor sits on the dresser nearby. Before she can ask what’s going on, a second Yellow-Eyed Demon enters the room. She watches in horror as he slits his wrist and lets his blood drip into his mouth.

Mom runs in. The whole room smells of sulfur. For the second time, Sam watches someone burn to death on the ceiling.

“I’ve got demon blood in me?” she says, though she catalogues the fact that Mom didn’t seem surprised to see him. “That’s what you did to all of us?”

And the Demon nods, almost sympathetic. “Yes, all of you,” he answers, “but you’re the only one that matters.”

 

 

He kills the Yellow-Eyed Demon with the last bullet in the Colt, they shut the Hell’s Gate, and Sam finds out about the deal and her death.

First she slaps him. Then she hugs him and starts to cry.

 

 

Even though she didn’t fulfill her destiny as the one who’s supposed to lead Hell’s army, everyone downstairs still knows who Samantha Winchester is. With Azazel dead, they’ve got his daughter—the only competition to the ruling title—locked up and out of the way. Lilith charged Ruby with the honor of gaining the girl’s trust and turning her into one of them. Who was she to refuse?

So she kills her own kind. They’re all scum anyway, still loyal to a dead king.

After that’s done and over with, she reports back to Lilith and when she returns, Samantha’s sitting miserable in a diner while her brother works on a case involving his last girlfriend from before the two got together. She might not remember her time down in Hell after the other one of Azazel’s children killed her (his daughter’s the one who _didn’t_ torture her, the freak), but Ruby can bet that if she did, she’d think the incest is what landed there.

“We’re just like humans,” she tells the girl after revealing what she is. “Some of us good, some of bad. But most of us are just dicks.”

Good thing they’re in a diner, or Lucifer only knows what Samantha would do. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I want to help you save your brother.”

 And Samantha’s deep enough in love to trust her. Pathetic, Ruby thinks, and eats another fry.

 

 

Sometimes Dean can be _seriously_ overprotective. “Put this on,” he says the moment he sees the way everyone in the town is dressed, and throws her his jacket. “I don’t want to risk you getting mistaken for a whore.”

Really, it’s not like she’s dressed all that “badly” by societal standards—her blue shirt barely reveals anything, she’s got a damn cardigan on, and she’s wearing a pair of skinny jeans. “I’ll look a little ridiculous bundled up,” she says, stepping out of the car after him. “Dean, it’s like seventy five degrees.”

 “Just put it on, Sam.”

“No.”

“To your left.” She glances in the direction he nods his head to and finds a group of men already staring at her. “ _Now_ will you put it on?”

So maybe she doesn’t think what she’s wearing will help whether or someone wants to try something, but she pulls on the jacket and zips it up anyway. Dean’s got a year left to live if she doesn’t save him; he can be as overprotective as he wants.

 

 

The moment he separates the two of them, Gordon watches the calm Sam had been maintaining dissolve. Her heart rate’s gone up, beating erratically, and her breathing’s loud enough to hear even without his enhanced senses. But it isn’t until the smell of sulfur that clings to her blood increases that he realizes he made a mistake.

A piece of sharp, heavy metal held tightly to the ceiling suddenly falls.

It takes off his head before he even realizes what’s happening.

 

 

After the incident with the witches, Ruby, and the other demon, Dean sits her down in their latest crap motel. “You’ve been possessed by one, Sam,” he says, looking down at her. “Kind of gave you an inside look. Do you really think any of them can actually want to help us?”

Despite everything Meg did, she made sure Sam didn’t feel any pain. She figures now’s not the time to remind him of that. “Lenore was a good vampire and you thought that wasn’t possible,” she points out. “And it’s not like we’ve encountered many demons before.”

He clenches his jaw. “I have a bad feeling about her. It seems an awful lot like a demon deal.”

“Yeah, because you know all about that.”

For a moment, she honestly thinks he’s about to hit her. But he doesn’t and instead says, “If you want to get me out of this deal, fine. But you’ve got to do it some other way. I ain’t letting you die because you trusted a demon.”

“So you’re telling me what I can and can’t do it?”

“Well, it has to do with me. Don’t I get a say in it?”

Oh—oh, that _hypocrite._ “Like you gave me a say?”

He goes for a walk and slams the motel door hard behind him.

 

 

On Wednesday, Sam sticks to his side like glue, but won’t touch him. Almost the moment the clock hits _12:01_ on Thursday, she’s all over him, clinging so desperate it scares him. “You died a minute after I woke up the last time,” she says, pulling his shirt over his head and this isn’t really the type of shit people say during sex. “I had a panic attack and shorted the electricity as you plugged something in.”

Her hand slips under the waistband on his jeans and he really shouldn’t be turned on right now. Just like he should really be worried more about how she was able to short the electricity. “How many Tuesdays did you _have?_ ”

As his brain catches up to him and reminds him that she’s wearing way too many layers right now, she says, “Lost count around a hundred. You died with a minute left til Wednesday once. I managed to keep you alive all day and then Mr. Lancaster threw a fire bomb into the window.” She undoes the button and zipper on his pants. “The waitress in the dinner killed you three times. Food poisoning killed you six. You got run over by twenty cars. A dog killed you, a piano fell, a robber shot you, you choked, you drowned, you—”

He pushes her away by the waist, ignoring that for her, this is probably the first time they’ve touched in at least a hundred days. “It’s over,” he’s tells her. “Loop’s broken, Sammy. You’re out.”

“Shut up, Dean.”

So he quiets and so does she and he tries not to think about how she’s not really out, because he’ll be dead in a few months anyway.

 

 

All it takes is a few minutes alone with Samantha to realize exactly how wrong he was about her.

As her brother packs rounds, Victor helps her install the recorded exorcism into the system. The blonde demon is gone and Sam insisted that once this is done, the three of them are coming with her and Dean when they leave in case anything escapes. “Can I trust you to be honest with me now?” he asks warily because the more he learns, the more she freaks him out, too. She nods, but doesn’t look at him. “What’s the chance of this actually working?”

He watches as she hacks a password like it’s nothing. “We seem to have exceptionally bad luck even for hunters, but we always get ourselves out of it,” she answers, voice almost casual, and he thinks about how the left side of his bed as been cold for three years. Who gives a fuck if they’re a “we?” After a moment, she adds, “Can I trust you to be honest with me, too?”

“By this point? I think we’ve past the investigation game, Winchester.”

There’s another pause before she says, “Why was I never charged with anything?”

Victor thinks she must already know the answer. “Anyone who ever looked into your case saw your file. We thought you were a victim.” In the course of three hours, he’s figured out she’s ever bit as dangerous as her brother. The only difference is that she hides it better.

She tells him the Arizona Ripper was a wraith, not a human. “Did you really think I was the victim with Dean,” she asks, “or did you just to?”

He doesn’t want to admit she’s right. She obviously doesn’t need him to say it, either.

 

 

Spruce expects an all night search to find Corbett and the hot know-it-all chick, but McDreamy finds a hidden doorway and it’s over. He’s staring down the face of his friend through his camera lens because somehow that makes it hurt less, and Winchester passes them by without a comment. Here’s a twenty-two-year-old dead with a spike in his neck and the girl’s still making noise, so she’s alive, which means he should be able to spare half a second at least. Coldhearted bastard.

But the then he hears it, the girl’s quiet voice going, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, I promise I won’t do it again, please don’t—”

He looks up because, um, what the fuck, and sees through the night vision Dean (was that his name? Spruce can’t remember right now) gripping at his sister harder than any psychology professor would probably advise. “You’re not there, Sammy,” he keeps saying, “you’re not there, that was six years ago, open your—”

 Sammy just starts crying harder. “God, stop, stop using—”

Then Dean notices the camera and Spruce is pretty sure he’ll have worse nightmares about the look on this guy’s face than the ghost. “Turn that _fucking thing_ off right now or I swear to _God_ that I will kill you.”

By the time Spruce already has it off record and facing the floor, Dean’s got his sister hauled up in his arms. She doesn’t snap out of it until the fighting starts and he thinks it’s really screwed up that seeing a ghost and a shotgun is what calms her down.

There’s no way in hell he’s letting that hit the final cut.

 

 

At first when Sam suggests using Doctor Benton’s research, Dean thinks he’s joking. But she’s not.

He doesn’t understand she’d burn the world to ash if it meant he wouldn’t go to Hell.

 

 

In the last bit of free time Dean knows he’ll ever have, he calls up Victor Hendricksen, who managed to get away because Sam convinced him to bring them all the along and thank fuck for that right now.

“Look,” he says, cutting straight to the chase and not caring that he woke the man up, “this is going to sound crazy, but Sam died like a year ago, I made a demon deal to bring her back, and now I’m going to Hell in a few days. I need you to promise you’ll keep tabs on her.”

Of course, Hendricksen’s about as confused as Dean thought he would be, but it doesn’t take long for him to agree. He gives the man a list of his sister’s aliases and they exchange an awkward goodbye, which is adequate for such an awkward call.

Hopefully with Bobby’s help, this will be enough.

 

 

On May 2, 2008, the town of New Harmony, Indiana experiences a shortage of electricity and hot water that lasts for a week. No other knows where it came from, other than it started after the sounds of a man and woman screaming and the barking of dogs, or so the neighbors say.

The little girl from the house with the supposed screaming ends up in a psychiatric hospital a month and a half later.

 

 

Since Victor promised, he keeps tabs on Sam. Sometimes they even talk on the phone, and she never sounds good.

When he suggests they try to meet somewhere, she hangs up on him, and he never extends the offer again.

 

 

After he convinces Sam that it’s really him, the fact that he hasn’t laid eyes on her in forty years causes a complete lapse in judgment. He’s got his mouth to hers for maybe a second before Bobby says, “At least warn me so I can give you two some privacy.”

Dean expects Sam to jump away, so he doesn’t, but instead she just moves her head, keeps her hands twists into his shirt. “You, uh, _knew?_ ”

Obviously he doesn’t have much of a problem with it, from the blank way he’s looking at the two of them, so Dean for the first time ever, really, says _why not_ , and pulls her tighter to him. Bobby tells them, “I caught the two of you locking lips when you were eighteen. I figured it was none of my business to tell you. For the record Ellen’s got her suspicions too.”

“Oh god.” Sam buries her head in Dean’s shoulder and he’s been back from forty years of Hell for a day, so he doesn’t have it in him to be embarrassed about anything right now. “Bobby, this is so uncomfortable.”

“Hey, I ain’t the one who decided to act all Casanova on you, Sam.”

Well, damn, first day back and his sister’s already blushing. And maybe his smile’s a bit too enthusiastic when he says, “How about we check you out and head back to Bobby’s place? I don’t know about you, but I _really_ want to figure out what’s going on around here.”

Then she’s smiling, too, though it’s small and tentative and she looks twelve instead of twenty-five. “Yeah,” she says, and takes his hand, which isn’t something he would’ve done forty years ago before Alistair carved out his insides and the only thing he remembered from his old life was her screaming. Her smiles and voice starts to chip away at the sound and he wonders if getting her to laugh will melt it. If he even deserves that. “Yeah,” she repeats. “I’d like that.” She pulls him down for another kiss and Bobby walks away.

 

 

Sam looks like Mom.

It kind of creeps Dean out that this means he finds his own mother uncomfortably attractive.

 

 

“If I didn’t know you, I would hunt you.”

Maybe it’s something leftover from Hell, or maybe he’s just sick of being toyed with and lied to, but Dean can’t even find it in him to feel bad when his sister looks at him like her whole world came crashing down. Because he means it, he _knows it_ —Gordon Walker might’ve been batshit in the end, but the point remains the same that someone’s hunted her before. And not everyone knows her the way he or Bobby do; if she doesn’t clean up her act soon, someone else will probably come after her, too. He knew she’d be bad without him, but not _this_ bad.

He expects to stay fine with it forever, or at least a while, but the feeling of indifference lasts less than half a week. How can it when she looks like she’s waiting for him to kill her, or gets jumpy if he comes up to her from behind?

She might’ve made a mistake, but that doesn’t give him an excuse to be such a shitty brother. Hell didn’t steal that from him. He won’t let it, he decides, and starts trying to make it up to her without saying sorry. In the end, life’s just easier that way.

 

 

At some point Dean makes a virginity joke and Sam’s angry enough to leave the bar. She’s genuinely surprised he catches up to her before she even reaches the motel.

Unfortunately, he’s kind of pissed off with her now, too. “What the fuck’s your problem, Sam?”

She means to bite it back, but her brain to mouth filter has other ideas when she snaps, “You and Legally Blonde have been eyeing each other all day. I thought you’d want some alone time.”

“We’ve been together _nine years_ ,” he says, staring at her incredulously and oh, like he really doesn’t get it. “You really think I want to fuck some random chick in a bar?”

“I don’t know, it’s not like we _haven’t_ _slept in the same fucking bed_ since you got back or anything.”

He clenches his teeth and says, “It’s not like that,” and when she rolls her eyes, he continues, “Sam—”

“Save it, Dean.” Before she can walk away, he grabs her around the waist from behind and pulls her in and she’s pissed off and aggravated, which means she’s more susceptible to panic, and it’s building in back of her throat. “Dean, I’m really not in the mood to be touched right now.”

For the first time ever, he doesn’t let go of her right away. Did four months make him forget or something? “Look, Sammy—”

“ _Let go of me_.”

Suddenly his face pales and his look of panic mirrors her own. Quickly, he lets her go. “Fuck, Sammy, I’m—I’ll…go back to the bar.”

She nods shakily and heads back to the motel. He enters some time around eleven, which is early, and crashes in the other bed.

 

 

Castiel expects to find a soul red and blackened by Hell, so different from Dean’s despite his time in service to Alistair, when he’s told to meet Samantha Winchester, but he finds instead one so bright it would be blinding if not for the dark taints of Azazel’s stain.

Naturally, Uriel does not find this quite so fascinating and continues to treat her as if she fits the original assumption. She sticks out her arm, such a simple human gesture, and Castiel grasps it in first meeting. “Samantha Winchester,” he says, peering down at the small soul, “the Girl with the Demon Blood.”

Her soul dulls with resigned sadness and Dean, who’s been standing guard as older brothers are charged to do, shifts the topic to one pf relevancy and his younger sister’s disappointment is a nearly physical manifestation.

 

 

Eventually, after Dean lashes out at her for trusting one of the few friends she’s _ever_ had, Sam finally tells him, “I went a little crazy without you. I had one of those anxiety attacks that I’m too stupid to help myself out of and…gave up, I guess. She reminded me I had to get you out before I could do anything.” After a pause, she adds, “Which I didn’t.”

He doesn’t look so angry now. “Define ‘do anything.’”

“I had a full bottle of Vicodin next to me.”

Even though it’s pretty apparent he still doesn’t trust Ruby, he starts arguing with Sam a little less.

 

 

Two days after he finally admits to his sister what he did in Hell and she insisted that she didn’t care, that all that matters is that he’s back topside, they land themselves back at Bobby’s place. Even though he can tell Sam’s somehow dumb enough to mean what she said, he knows she’s still pissed at him. Bobby must feel the tension too, because asks what’s going on with him.

Dean dodges the question. So does Sam.

“What you told me,” she says finally, though, and this is the last fucking thing he wants to talk about but no matter which way he looks at it, this is his own screw up, “is that why you slept with Anna? Because angels aren’t—breakable, or something?”

Yeah, actually, that’s the general gist of it. Whether or not they’re brother and sister and whether or not she’s been kind of scaring him since he got back, that was still the text book definition of cheating. “Or something.”

The light above them _coincidentally_ flickers. Ever since they got back, Sam’s freaky ESP also seems to have gotten stronger and for someone reason, she’s completely clueless. Either that, or she’s a better liar. She answers, “You’ve barely even touched me since the first day. I’ve had to watch you look at other girls and now I found out from one of them, not you, that you fucked her. Be honest, have you slept with anyone else?”

“No,” he says, because he answers. “Just—just Anna. And I know it doesn’t mean anything by this point, but—”

She’s already shaking her head to tell him to shut up before he can he’s sorry. “Dean, I love you, but I’m not up to hearing an apology right now,” she says. “I’m going to sleep on the couch tonight. Don’t try to take one for the team and say you will; you’re too tall for it.”

He doesn’t say anything when she leaves the room.

 

 

Ruby knew Sam would come to her sooner or later, and when she does, she greets the Messiah with a smile and offers her arm. The girl doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t have to, and when she’s high and confused by the end of it, Ruby pets her hair and tells her she did a good job.

On her first few tries, Sam kills the hosts when she exorcises the demons and that almost gets her to stop.

Before she can, Ruby makes sure she’s too addicted to call it quits.

 

 

During Amanda’s weekly Sunday breakfast run at Paul’s Diner with Matt, she never runs into anyone special, but this time is different. The Winchester siblings definitely count as special. After ten years without seeing them, how can they not?

“Kathy,” she says when the waitress comes over because she has to make sure, “isn’t that the girl from your English class freshman year?”

When she was a senior, Kathy was a freshman and she and Amanda’s little sister are still best friends today. “Yeah, it is,” the younger woman answers as Sam laughs at something Dean says, too quiet to hear from four booths down. “And yes, that is, in fact, your high school boyfriend. Go over and say hi.”

She can’t, though, since it’s not exactly like they left on good terms. Hindsight is twenty/twenty and she’d known he was leaving and that his dad dropped him off at the motel in town to take care of his sister while he ran off somewhere vague; thinking he’d want to meet her parents was delusional. He was someone she made out with in janitor closest, not someone she brought home. That just wasn’t him. “No, I’m good,” she says, and sees that he still smiles at Sam the way he used to—soft and delicate like he never did to anyone else. “Can I have the usual please?”

Her son orders orange juice and French toast. Sam looks back, same expression on her face as there is on his, and wonders why they’re still together.

 

 

Bobby pulls Sam up off the floor after he breaks the siren’s curse. She doesn’t seem to really understand what’s going on and keeps asking where Dean is, but the idjit is freaking out himself too much to saying. But oh Hell, Bobby would be too if he got a spell put on him that caused him to almost kill his sister.

As he starts bandaging up her palms where apparently she grabbed the blade of the damn knife her brother pulled on her, he says, “Dean’s fine, Sam. Just a siren, but she’s dead now.”

Dean’s siren had been, well, her. No surprise there. Though, Bobby doesn’t know how Sam managed to last as long as she did; she’s good, but so’s her brother, and he’s got a foot and seventy pounds on her. “Bobby?” she sounds confused, like she didn’t realize it was him, and he doesn’t want to know who she thought he was with her brain that scrambled. “Where’s Dean?”

“I’m right here, Sammy.” At least the boy managed to get his shit together. Still, he’s shaking like a damn leaf and the last few times they’ve been to the house, she’s been sleeping on the couch. Dean looks at him and adds, “I can take it from here. We should leave before the civvies call the cops.”

They better solve whatever crap they’re going through soon or Bobby’s locking them in a closet until they do, he decides. He doesn’t need to go grey any faster than he already is.

 

 

So the fact that Sam using her demon powers again is a bad thing is a fundamental truth, but damn everything, he just found out he broke the first seal. She destroyed Alistair by thinking about it and the biggest consequence was a nosebleed. It’s bad—really, really bad—but maybe the whole treating her like glass was more of an idiot move than he realized. Not that her forgiving her for sleeping with Anna after a month and a half is all that smart either.

The first time’s harsher than he expects, like she’s trying to prove something, but for the second they go slow. She’s less thin, healthier looking, with new scars, and he’s still nearly a clean slate.

“I love you,” she says, and he kisses her to swallow down the words. He can’t say it because she doesn’t expect him too, but he loves this girl so much not even Hell could erase her.

 

 

One moment Samantha Wesson’s walking to her car on the corner of Fifth and Hemingway and the next moment Sam Winchester has her phone to her ear calling her brother. She’s still in Dean’s—or, Dean Smith’s, anyway—shirt because her ugly yellow one got stained with blood and why the fuck was she in an alternate reality for almost a month?

When he picks up and tells her the angels did it and asks if she needs him to pick her up, she answers, “No, I’ll do it. You might’ve gotten my degree, but I got the Impala.”

Samantha Wesson’s only possibly living family was Meg Masters, who was legally missing, was dating Jake Talley (seriously, she prayed to these guys?), who was overseas, and got a degree at a community college in Kansas. She always skipped lunch and dinner, almost slept with her boss (Dean), only didn’t because that would be cheating, and inherited a ’67 Chevy Impala from her foster dad, which was just about the only nice thing he ever did for her. Both her parents died in a drunk driving accident in her foster mom’s car that she was the only survivor of. Initially she’d gotten accepted to Stanford, too, but not as a full ride and couldn’t go because she couldn’t make enough money with her job to pay for room and board as well as books, the meal plan, and other extra expenses.

Basically, her life sucked. Before picking up Dean, she grabs her real clothes from the bag hidden under the false trunk and changes in a diner restroom.

 

 

Considering that Chuck thought all of this was fiction, he honestly went a long time believing Sam was the result of drinking too much. Dean—well, Dean’s the one who went to Hell, and that didn’t leave him off at such a well balanced state, but he’s the one the few readers he actually has have a tendency have as the favorite character. Sera made him rewrite _Asylum_ as if Sam came along for the trip instead of brought whatshername home because she seemed too much like a “damsel in distress.” Then he cut the whole drinking demon blood thing himself because he thought it made her too unsympathetic. When he first started writing, he almost cut the panic attacks and past kidnapping trauma too, but Sera said it was cool that he tied something in his story into true events.

Ever since he’s met these two, he’s been having trouble believing any of it was real. Now he’s watching Sam have one of her panic attacks and wonders if Sera would still say “tying it to real events is cool.”

“She’s not coming back, Sammy,” Dean’s saying quietly, rubbing her back and he came close to cutting the incest too, but didn’t last minute _._ “I’m not letting her get to you again.”

“I’m sorry, you were right, I shouldn’t have—”

He cuts her off with, “Doesn’t matter. How about we head to Bobby’s for a couple of days? Stay away from motels.”

She doesn’t answer, just buries her head in his shoulder, and Chuck feels like a voyeur. Because his visions had gotten stronger near the end, he knows she had a plan and he might not be able to see inside Lilith’s head, but he’s betting she only wanted to scare her. When they got there, Sam was pressed to the mattress looking terrified, which wasn’t too far off from his first one.

Of all the people in the world, why did it have to be _their_ heads he has access to?

 

 

Bobby finds her outside, covered in scratches, her own blood, and bruises. “I-is that actually you?” she says when he’s close enough to touch her and her whole body is shaking so hard it looks like she’s having trouble standing.

No one’s supposed to be able to get out of the panic room, but here she is anyway. “Yeah, Sam,” he answers cautiously, and puts down the gun so he can place his hands on her shoulders. “It’s really me.”

She reaches up and puts her hands to her head, which just gets blood in her hair. There’s more caked under her fingernails. Aw, shit. “E-everything h-hurts, Bobby.”

Well, withdrawal ain’t supposed to be fun, he thinks, but keeps it to himself. “How’d you end up here?” he asks instead.

She shakes her head, grips at her hair tighter. He needs Dean, but he doesn’t know what yelling’s going to do it her now that everything in the area’s already rattling. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s her who’s doing that. “I d-don’t even know how I e-ended up in th-there,” she’s saying, not really breathing right now, and he _definitely_ needs her brother. “Th-then the door was open a-and—oh no, how am I outside?”

“How ‘bout you come back in, kid?” Sam’s always been harder to figure out than Dean, and a panicking Sam is a whole ‘nother ballpark he doesn’t usually have to deal with alone. “We can help you in—”

But she’s shaking her head again, harder this time, and her hands move from her hair to her arms wrapping around her stomach. After twenty-two years of knowing her, he can tell when she’s in pain and this is the worst he’s ever seen her. “P-please don’t,” she says— _begs_ , “Bobby, please don’t p-put me back in there, i-it’s—”

“Sam, it’s for you own—”

“It’s dark a-and cold and I was t-tied down but then I w-wasn’t and I didn’t have a knife I couldn’t cut it out I didn’t know what I was doing oh god, what’s happening to—no!”

Before Bobby can even register what’s happening, something hits the back of his head and he’s gone.

 

 

Regardless of how bad Sam messed up this time, Dean’s not their dad; he shouldn’t have told her not to come back. His cheek stings where she hit him, but that’s the worst of it. If he hadn’t hit her, too, maybe he could’ve actually gotten her to figure out what was going on.

“She didn’t even know what was happening when I was talking to her,” Bobby says when he explains earlier, annoyed. “She’d scratched open her arms to cut out the blood.”

Yeah, he’d noticed those too. “If she’d just _listened_ to me—” he starts, but cuts himself off before continuing on, “I don’t get what’s going on with her anymore. Or, I do. She’s high as fuck because of that demon bitch. Speaking of which, how’d she manage to get out of there in the first place?”

With a shrug and a sigh, Bobby answers, “We need more whisky if we’re keeping up this conversation. Stay here while I get it.”

He does, and isn’t expecting the sudden flash of white light the moment Bobby leaves the room.

 

 

After Cas restores his sister’s lungs and she’s brought back to life all over again, Dean clings to her much tighter than she seems to expect. Hey, she might’ve started the Apocalypse and all, and he’s so pissed off about that he can barely think straight, but that doesn’t mean he wants her dead.

He pretends he doesn’t notice the wet blood on her sleeves.

 

 

Mom convinces her there aren’t any demons at all, that everyone’s hallucinating, which means Sam makes sense now, so Jo cuts the other girl free.

She’s drenched in holy water and covered in salt. Considering that last time they were black too, Jo had forgotten her eyes are actually the weirdest shade of blue she’s ever seen. “Where’s Dean?” she asks immediately. “Is he okay? Did anyone hurt him?”

Before Jo can answer, Dean says from behind her, “You’re joking, right? Do you really think anyone here could land a hit on me?”

“There _are_ two hunters here.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. You have salt on your face.”

Sam shuts up and Jo wonders if they’re still doing their weird incest thing because the tension in here is so thick she can feel it.

 

 

“What do you mean you haven’t talked to her in five years?”

Other Guy (as he’s come to call him in his head) looks back at him blankly. “We never met up. The hiatus was permanent. Somewhere down the line she gave herself up.”

No, his mind screams. No, there’s no fucking way this possible. “I literally got off the phone with her five seconds I woke up here,” he says, trying to fit his mind around this, “agreeing to meet up with her. You mean you got a call from Sammy saying fucking Lucifer, the dick who wants to wear her to prom, showed up looking like you, that she tried to kill herself but can’t die, and _you turned her away?_ ”

Still, Other Guy doesn’t seem fazed and Dean doesn’t get it. He knows he’s not the nicest person in the world, even by hunter standards. He went to Hell, he started having sex with his sister when she was only sixteen, and he’s killed more than just a couple of people in order to finish a job. And sure, he and Sam are split up now, but it was never supposed to be permanent. It’s only been three weeks and if he’s being honest with himself (he isn’t), he’s starting to feel like he can’t breathe without her next to him.

“A lot of shit’s going down soon and she’s the center of it, always has been. You don’t understand it yet.”

“Well, then I don’t want to understand it!”

When Other Guy laughs, the sound is bitter and Dean refuses to turn into him. He’s not letting _this_ be his future and he’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

 

 

Sometime during Dean’s trip to the future, Cas went to Oklahoma and zapped Sam to Bobby’s, which means she must’ve really been desperate because she doesn’t pray anymore. By the time he actually made it there, too, she was already in the hospital.           

She signs herself out AMA a day later, which doesn’t surprise him. The doctors gave her the okay and she never liked hospitals to begin with. “Cas killed them, if you’re thinking of doing it yourself,” she says later, curled up on the bed and holding a mug of tea. Dean doesn’t have it in him to fight with her about eating right now. “I tried to tell him not to, but it happened too fast for me to say anything.”

The entire right side of her face is a mess of bruises and under her clothes is worse. From what he’s managed to gather, they tried to force feed her demon blood and when she spit out their only vial’s worth, Tim managed to get her pinned against the floor. The fact that her uniform was a dress only made it easier for them.

“How did you not want them dead?”

He reaches over slow enough that she can pull away if she wants, but she doesn’t, and he draws her up to his side. Ever since he got back, he hasn’t been all that happy about leaving her alone. “I already got Reggie killed,” she answers. “I didn’t—they didn’t deserve to die too.”

“You didn’t get their friend killed, Sam.” It’s probably a good idea they can’t see each other’s faces right now because Dean’s about half a second away from breaking down himself, for once, too. Since it hasn’t been all that long, the dark bruises on her arms are distinctly handprints. She should’ve been with him, not alone in Nowhere Land, Oklahoma where a couple of hunters could get to her and tear her apart while she went to go quit a job. “There’s no excuse out there for doing something like that. Doesn’t make it different because they’re human.”

If anything, that makes it worse. She shudders and takes a sip of her tea. “Do you think it’s the whole antichrist thing?” she asks. “Is that why this keeps happening to me?”

“Whoa, wait, what?” He pushes her away so he can look down at her because _that_ was so not okay. “No, that has nothing to do with this. Nothing about this is your fault.” Did he fuck up somewhere along the way and get her to think that?

“Then why does this keep _happening?_ ” Her voice cracks and god, she still sounds like such a kid sometimes that it kills him. “First the wraith, then the shifter, Lilith—”

When he grabs her, it’s rougher than he means to, and she winces in pain. “Samantha, listen to me,” he says. “ _This isn’t your fault._ I don’t care what you’re supposed to be, or what anyone says—if you start telling a person to stop and they don’t, that’s on them, not on you. Got it?”

Normally this is the sort of thing she’d agree to, at least to shut him up, but instead she’s shaking her head. “Dean, I don’t feel like my body’s even mine anymore,” she tells him and fuck if that isn’t a stab to the heart. And another twist. “I had the king of Hell put blood in my mouth when I was six months old because Mom made a deal, less than a week ago I had Lucifer tell me I was made for him—”

“Fuck Azazel and fuck Lucifer!” She flinches again and he forces down his anger. “Sammy, you went to high school. You’ve got a damn pre-law degree from Stanford. Somewhere down the line you must’ve gotten the consent talk. It applies to you too.”

Suddenly, she starts crying and all fight goes out of him. As gently as he can, he removes the mug from her hands, and pulls her into a hug. On some days he wishes he could just hold her like this and never let go.

 

 

“You can’t be serious.”

“You’re staying here, Sam.”

“To Hell I am.”

He slips his gun in the waistband of his jeans. “Do it for me,” he insists, and kisses her forehead. Even though she’s getting better, she’s still walking with a limp and has bruises on her body. “I’ll see you later, Sam.”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

 

 

Even after the Trickster turns out the Gabriel, Dean’s still treating her like she’s fragile, and Sam immediately gets around to fixing that. “Are you sure?” he keeps asking her. “Are you sure?”

She makes it up to when he’s about to push in before she suddenly realizes she can’t. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs against his lips, and finishes him off with a hand job instead. “I really thought I could do it.”

Somehow she ended up with a brother that’s much too good to her and he answers, “It’s fine. I can wait.”

Last time she made him wait four months. She really hopes it doesn’t take as long this time around.

 

 

It’s her fault. She wants to apologize because she feels she needs to say something, but doesn’t, because she knows Dean will tell her it isn’t. But it is, because they wouldn’t be dead if she hadn’t kick started the Apocalypse. If she hadn’t let Lucifer free to create that whole scenario in the first place.

Now Jo and Ellen are dead and Death is running loose. Dean should’ve killed her when he had the chance because now she can’t die.

 

 

On normal occasions, Dean’s all up for loyalty and everything, but he’s got exceptions to every rule. “Tell Bobby to send in someone else,” Sam says after he tells her about Martin’s call, gripping onto his hand so hard it hurts. “Dean, I can’t go in there, I can’t.”

He could probably take care of this thing alone, but Sam’s already edging on the verge of a panic attack and he knows if he ever suggests that, she’s gone. Besides, he doesn’t like the idea of leaving her alone lately and Bobby can’t deal with her after she gets past a certain point. What if something goes pear shaped? It’s always the simple hunts that do.

That, and it sounds like it could be a wraith. He’s never putting his sister in the same room as one of them again.

“I’ve picked up a different hunt in New Jersey,” he answers, and she relaxes immediately. “Hearts missing, animal killings, lunar cycle’s right—I think we’ve caught ourselves a werewolf, Sammy.”

They start discussing the case and when she gets up to shower, he gives Bobby a call. Apparently Annie Hawkins is already on the job and Dean will never stop being relieved that he has someone else on his side when it comes to this.

 

 

For pretty good reason, Sam’s never liked Anna, and Dean’s never blamed her for it (he shouldn’t have let it happen, but she knew about them and let it go ahead anyway when she could’ve stopped it too), so he was hoping that’d be enough to get his sister to disagree with her plan. But apparently she doesn’t have it in her.

“Make Dean an only child,” she says to Mom like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. “He’s the one it’s okay to have. You won’t have to leave Dad, and the world will still be saved. Azazel can’t touch him.”

Mom looks back and forth between the two of them and even Dean’s too shocked to really say anything. “Yellow-Eyes fucks with other kids, too, Sam,” he says when he finally finds his voice.

Sam smiles, small and self-deprecating and god, he just doesn’t _get_ her sometimes. “Not really, Dean,” she answers. “Azazel might've had others, but there’s only one of me.”

 

 

As it turns out, Sam’s withdrawal is about ten times more brutal than he thought it was, and has periods where it isn’t so bad. During the period of times when her telekinesis isn’t trying to kill her or anyone near her, he takes her out and tries to at least get her to drink water. Bobby said last time she didn’t even know where she was and the more he sees of this, the more he wonders how the Hell she got out in the first place without someone opening the door from the outside.

Now she’s probably on the tail end of it, he’s guessing, because her mind hasn’t thrown her or anything else around for the past twelve hours. “Stop scratching,” he says for what feels like the hundredth time, and shoves her hand away from her arm so he can get the shirt over her head. He’s not sure if dead inside is the right to put it, but Famine was right when he said there was something wrong with him—no brother would let his sister go through that _alone_ , but he had, and that’s cold. “It’s already out, Sam.”

Ever since the withdrawal started, she’s been trying to scratch herself open to get the demon blood out, but he’s pretty sure it’s already gone from her system. And even if it isn’t, there’s no way he’s letting her try to bleed it out herself. Her arms already scarred enough; past hunts, the last time she did this, when she tried to kill herself to prove Lucifer wrong. Protect Sammy, Dad always said. Yeah, hasn’t been so good at that lately, has he?

Nevermind. Hasn’t been since the October she was eighteen.

“S’always there,” she mumbles, but at least she’s stopped. “Won’t go away.”

When he tells her, “You’ll be fine, Sammy,” it feels like a lie. But at least it’s a good one.

 

 

“Goddammit, Dean, the thing with the wraith was the direct result of Flagstaff!” It’s been three days since their little trip up to Heaven and her brother’s still giving her the cold shoulder. On the Christmas after she gave him the amulet, she had a nightmare he threw it away in a motel room soaked through with blood and Azazel told her everything happens for a reason. “I was an eighteen-year-old girl, lost and alone, and a week later we moved across state. Why the fuck would that memory be up in Heaven?”

He stares at her, wide-eyed, and she takes a deep breath, running her fingers through her hair. “I’m pretty sure I can’t go to Heaven without some sort of intervention,” she continues. “It doesn’t matter how human I am, I’m still Lucifer’s vessel and I don’t think even he could pull me back from there. I didn’t go upstairs because I belong there, Dean—I went upstairs so the angels could play _you_.”

The amulet’s in her bag, where she put it because not everything happens for a reason. “Christ, Sam,” he says. “I’m—I didn’t know. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she answers, because it is. “Just…stop ignoring me, okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I will.”

It takes more of an effort than it should not to cry.

 

 

Dean Winchester does not understand the concept of sleeping. Victor figures he should be used to this. “Call me at two in the morning again and I’ll send a SWAT team on your ass,” he says, sitting up on bed and turning on the light. Most of the time he calls them because something looks suspicious, not the other way around. It’s weird enough that the guy’s back from the dead, but he’s learned by now not to question anything. “What’s going on?”

“ _I need you to find two guys_ ,” Dean answers. “ _They’re hunters. Human. You’ve probably got charges stacked up against them in at least one state. Roy and Walt Spencer. They’re cousins._ ”

Even in his half-asleep state, the two names ring a bell. Fraud in California or something. “What’d they do?”

“ _Uh, they kind of shot Sam. And made me watch—but she’s good, alive. Still, they shot her._ ”

Well damn if he’s not wide away now. “Please tell me you at least brought the girl to the hospital.” He kept tabs on all her known aliases, like he promised Dean, saw her last hospital report, and hopes that the reason he hasn’t seen one now is either because they got her a new name.

“ _Like I said, she’s good._ ”

Since Victor knows that’s the best he’s going to get, he scribbles down the names on the notepad next to his bed. “I’ll call you when I’ve got ‘em.”

“ _Thanks. I owe you one._ ”

“Hm.”

He hangs up and spends the rest of the night trying to fall back to sleep.

 

 

After they lose Adam, but Dean doesn’t say yes to Michael, they take a weekend break in New York City. Originally Sam meant to spend it walking around, because they don’t get to go often, but they barely end up leaving the bed.

She’s really not complaining.

 

 

She kills the thing inside one of the few friends she made back in Stanford and manages not to derail into a panic attack until Dean freaks out on her on the side of the highway for suggesting her plan.

“You know, sometimes I really fucking hate you,” he says and she thinks back to the voicemail and she knows it already, true, but it still stings. “Hunters have the reputation of being suicidal, but you’re the only person I know who really wants to kill yourself so much that you’re willing to _jump into the Cage for it._ ”

You were going to say yes to Michael, she wants to scream, but doesn’t. And that wasn’t even to put a stop to this.

“That’s not why I’m doing it,” she says, crossing her arms, collapsing in on herself. “I started it, I have to be the one who finishes it. One person for all of humanity? Seems like a pretty good trade, Dean.”

“Yeah, well not to me.”

Sam would burn the world if it meant keeping him alive. If she can kill herself to keep him alive without destroying the world in the process, she’ll take that as the better option.

For some reason, he just doesn’t seem to understand that.

 

 

Before she says yes to Lucifer and jumps, she listens to the voicemail one last time to remind herself why she has to do it. Maybe if she does this, Dean will see that sometimes she can get it right.

She doesn’t expect to wake up three days later, head crammed with roughly forty years of the Cage in her head, but no trauma to accompany it.

 

 

Lisa doesn’t like Sam. She tries to, because from what she’s managed to gather the girl jumped into worst part of Hell to save the world from the Apocalypse, but she returns with a cold sunshine smile and temptation of another hunt. Dean promises that he’ll come back, that they can make this work, and Lisa believes him. She believes him because she wants to, but she knows how this works.

His sister’s back. Their touches last too long, and she’s here to steal him away.

 

 

Sam doesn’t care about the boy’s pain.

 _Sam_ doesn’t care that someone’s going to get hurt.

Okay, so Dean noticed there was something up about her, but this is a new one. She said straight out that she wasn’t in Hell very long, so what could Lucifer possibly have done to her to make her this cold in that short of amount of time?

“ _Most people think I burn hot, it’s actually quite the opposite._ ”

He feels really, really sick.

 

 

So this is the thing: Dean’s pretty sure his little sister just let him get turned into a vampire and also knows why no other vampire has ever tried to bite her before. Because goddamn, if this is what someone with demon blood laced through their system smells like, he can’t even imagine being around an actual demon.

“I’ve got the cure, Dean.” She’s with him, alone, and her pulse rate hasn’t gone up. Normal Sam would be a panicking mess by this point. “This will probably hurt, but better than being a vampire for the rest of eternity, right?”

He just scared the fuck out of Lisa and Ben because of this, and it’s all her fault. He doesn’t care how painful it’s going to be.

As it turns out, it’s very painful and he does care.

 

 

Despite not being able to feel much, it’s possible for Sam to get irritated, and though they’ve been working together, Dean’s been largely ignoring her. “Stop acting like this is on me,” she says eventually because she can’t stand this not talking thing. “It’s not like I knew my soul got left behind.”

His hands ball up at his sides. “Yeah, but you knew something was wrong,” he answers. “We could’ve figured it out earlier.”

“Oh, without you knocking me out, tying me to a chair, and letting your friend stick his arm through my chest?” she says. “Do you want to know something about the Cage, Dean? The absolute first form of torture Lucifer used on me? _The exact same thing._ ”

He flinches, and that feels good. “Look, you’re right. That wasn’t the way I should’ve done it at all, but—”

“Nothing anyone says before the word ‘but’ means anything real. I told you two to stop and you didn’t.”

That gets him to shut up. Suddenly she can’t stand the idea of being in the room with him and goes for a walk.

 

 

Dean feels like an idiot. Of course Sam can have a panic attack without a soul. Whatever’s wrong with her is a brain chemical thing, not anything else, and apparently all it took was a hit to the head for her to start thinking she’s in the Cage again.

 It would’ve been easier to deal with if she’d been speaking English instead of Enochian.

“Thanks,” he says to Cas after his friend knocks her out with a touch to the forehead to heal the concussion the spirit gave her. This is the first time he’s seen her unconscious since he’s gotten back. And, because he really has to know, he adds, “What was she saying?”

From the way Cas is looking at her, he knows it isn’t good. “‘What did you do with Michael?’”

She needs that soul back and she needs it now.

 

 

Ever since Meg came topside, she’s had the reputation of being strange for a demon, so she’s not surprised that she doesn’t have many followers despite holding rights of succession. What the Winchesters, or at least Dean, don’t realize, is that Hell has a hierarchy and when dear old Daddy got himself shot in the face, she was supposed to be Queen with her sister as the leader of her army.

But Lilith took objection and got that slut Ruby to corrupt Sam.

 Then Lucifer was free and Meg was, technically, for a little while, Queen of Hell because Lucifer was their God, not their Patriarch.

Now Crowley’s taken objection and all she wants to do is stay alive. And maybe put a sword in his face. All right, definitely put a sword through his face. Assisting Sam and Dean in order to do it? Not the worst deal she’s ever done. Despite being a demon and despite being on opposite sides during the Apocalypse, she’s always been a big believer in familial loyalty. Call it a character flaw.

“Oh, so you went and lost your soul, Sam?” she says when she finds out and clenches her hand, satisfied but Crowley’s third shout of pain.

Her sister scowls. “It’s not like I had much of a choice in the matter. He’s all yours, Meg.”

Dean protests, but she ignores him and steps forward to have a little fun. This is why family always makes the best allies.

 

 

Sam’s annoyed but not surprised when Dean grabs her around the waist and spins her around before she can walk away. “Heaven and Hell both agreed you couldn’t beat the Devil once, right?” he says. “I’ll figure out a way to—I don’t know—block the memories or something. I won’t try to put your soul back in otherwise.”

Heaven and Hell agreeing is never a good thing, but he has a point. “You’re leaving me as is if there’s anything below a seventy-five percent chance this’ll work,” she tells him. “I’m still me, I’m still Sam—I’ve just got a piece missing.” Or close enough, anyway.

“Okay, deal,” he answers, and starts leading her back to the car. “Let’s head back to Bobby’s. With Crowley dead, we actually have time to figure it out.”

 “Yeah, whatever.”

 They drive in silence.

 

 

Without a soul, it takes Sam a lot to be scared, but the moment Death shows up with his little black bag, she feels the now unfamiliar panic start to bubble up in her throat. Her brother must know it, too, because he grabs her right hand in both of his. “Just look at me,” he tells her. “Okay, Sam? Focus on me.”

Above her, Death says, “Don’t scratch the Wall.”

She doesn’t see him put the soul back in, but she feels it. She screams until the tears start leaking out and Dean doesn’t let go of her hand.

 

 

If it were up to Bobby, he’d tell Sam that she was topside the past year and a half, but with this whole Wall thing up and only semi-sturdy, it’s not worth the risk. Besides, she looks damn happier than he’s seen in _years_ , and he’s not going to ruin it.

 “It got longer,” she says with a smile, running her fingers through Dean’s hair. “I like it.”

Back before they were married, Karen used to work in a bakery in town. Bobby would also stop on his way back from school to buy a slice of her pie, and she always used to have flour caked under the fingernails. Once they were engaged, she started working on with him as secretary, turning Singer Salvage back into a family business, but she never stopped being that young baker who fell in love with him like a fool. And he knows that, what with them being siblings and all, he shouldn’t be nearly as okay with the Winchesters’ relationship as he is, but he can’t find it in himself to fault them for it. Because sometimes Sam looks at Dean and even right now, twenty-seven and fresh out of the Cage, it’s like seeing old candid photos of him and Karen.

Dean catches her hand. It’s bruised from where he held it too tight not a week earlier. “Go back to bed, Sammy,” he tells her. “You’re starting to sound high again.”

So much for these sandwiches. Considering that it’s not every day Samantha Winchester asks for food, Bobby might’ve gone a little overboard. She shakes her head and buries her face in her brother’s neck. “Not unless you come with me.”

 “It’s the middle of the day.”

“Don’t care. At least lie down with me.”

They must not even realize he’s here because he sighs in over exaggerated exasperation and stands, picking her up along with him. Sam laughs, quiet but clear, and Bobby hopes they don’t ever have to be apart long enough to forget what being in love feels like.

 

 

When Castiel reaches out to hug her, that cautionary part of her brain fires sudden warning signs and she sits down before he can touch her. “Sorry,” she says, and means it because she’s confused, feels like she’s missed something, which she’s pretty sure she has. “I’m still not good at the whole touching people thing.”

He says not to worry, that he’s frankly surprised she’s even awake, and she finds out she walked around soulless for a year.

God, even when she doesn’t know she’s doing it, she still manages to fuck everything up.

 

 

“How long was I out?” she asks, trying and failing to ignore the headache pounding behind her eyes.

As he hands her coffee, Dean answers, “About two minutes. What did it feel like to you?”

“A week.”

She tries not to do the math, but if two minutes felt like a week and there’s one thousand four hundred forty minutes in a day, then that’s seven hundred twenty weeks in a single twenty-four hour period. She doesn’t need to do anything more to know time moves faster in the Cage than it does in Hell and the number of years is racked up in the thousands.

Her head really hurts.

 

 

“You’re Jensen Ackles and I’m Emilia Clarke,” Sam says, reading off the _Supernatural (TV)_ Wikipedia page in his alternate universe trailer of all places. “It looks like your guy was mostly in soap operas, but my girl plays some awesome dragon queen lady in this show called _Game of Thrones._ ”

Then, to her great pleasure, she finds a YouTube video of one of his scenes. “I don’t like this universe, Sammy,” he says, shutting the laptop quickly, and she wishes she could download that video to her phone to show it to Bobby. “I want to get out of this universe, Sammy.”

This whole universe is wrong and it makes her body kind of ache, but her head feels lighter than it has since she woke up, if that’s even possible. “You’re just jealous,” she says, stretching out on Jensen Ackles’ bed. “You get overdramatic love stories and I get attractive clothes, dragons, and a kingdom to conquer.”

“Shut up, bitch, it’s just a TV show.”

“You mean _we’re_ just a TV show, jerk.”

He flops onto the bed next to her, slinging an arm across her waist and pulling her tight against his side, and right before she falls asleep she realizes they never checked to see if Jensen Ackles has a girlfriend.

 

 

Last time Samuel saw his grandchildren, they killed the King of Hell with the help of an angel and another demon and proved themselves the biggest hypocrites alive. He won’t deny they’re competent—Hell, Gwen practically worships Samantha for ending the Apocalypse or some nonsense he’s having trouble believing—but that doesn’t mean they’re the best in the business like everyone claimed. He hunted for Samantha a year, Dean for a bit, and they were good, but most of it seemed like smoke and mirrors.

Apparently it wasn’t just smoke and mirrors.

Gwen’s dead now, and he’s in the room with two experienced hunters and two who _claim_ to be experienced even though twenty-seven is still too young to wear the title, but Singer and Turner aren’t the ones he finds himself wary of. Dean’s looking at him like one wrong move and he’s dead.

Sam look’s at him like she’s the only reason he isn’t. And that’s downright terrifying.

 

 

The night after Rufus dies, Dean doesn’t sleep much. He knows Sam doesn’t either.

Instead he holds her from behind in the dark just to feel her breathe.

 

 

Even though he knows he should be concentrating on better things, Cas takes a few minutes off to watch the Winchesters celebrate their defeat of Eve. “Isn’t this a little _sophisticated_ , Bobby?” Dean says, but accepts the glass of champagne anyway. “Where’d you get real ones?”

“I’m not completely useless,” the man answers, and Dean slings his arm around his sister’s shoulders. “Dammit, do you have to act like something out’ve a romance novel?”

Sam laughs and leans into him and despite the dark blots spread across her soul, the three of them chase away all shadows in the room until everything glows. “We just beat the Big Bad once and for all,” she says, sipping at her drink. “Bask in Chick-Flick Moments.”

“Aw, c’mon. Don’t call it that or I’ll have to let go.”

“Do that and I’ll have to kill you.”

He gives a prolonged kiss and Cas knows it’s time to leave them. Eventually they will discover his plan and the Winchesters make formidable enemies, so this is quite possibly the last bit of happiness he’ll ever be able to enjoy.

As it will save his home, he thinks he can live with that.

 

 

When he shatters the Wall inside his friend’s head to dust and rubble, she looks to him with such a face of betrayal that he comes much too close to rebuilding it then and there.

Perhaps he cannot live with it after all.

 

 

Once Sam gets her head cleared, she realizes how silly she’s being. Lucifer would never torture her like this. His preferred method was Stockholm Syndrome, until Michael was able to find them, remind her that she has Dean back in another life, and Lucifer had to get her back. Then he’d lock in a room dark and alone for so long that by the time he got her out, she thought he was saving him. It never worked as well as he hoped, but it worked enough. That’s what mattered.

If anything, this is the type of reality Michael would make to help her cope, but it would be happy. He let her have a child once, but then Lucifer found her again and had the imaginary Dean kill the imagery three-year-old. This is too dark for Michael, and too real to be Lucifer.

Basically, this isn’t a hallucination. It’s a little pathetic that she needs pain to remind herself of that.

One day she presses down so hard she cracks the skin, and her brother’s there almost instantly with disinfectant and another bandage. “I’ve got you, Sammy,” he says quietly as he fixes up the repeatedly opened wound. “You’re safe as long as you stick with me.”

She wants to withdraw when he touches her. Usually, even at her worst, he can be the one whose hands she can stand, but not this time. This time Lucifer hurt her too badly, and sometimes she wakes up wondering what he’ll do to her today, or where “the other one” or “green-eyed one” is. Despite more than seven thousand years downstairs, she never quite forgot her brother.

“I’ve got you,” he says again once his hands are off her. “No matter what, Sammy, I’ve got you.”

And she wishes that could be true.

 

 

Midway through a conversation about how Dean takes too many painkillers at once, Sam suddenly stops talking and stares at her hands. Her eyes are out of focus and her body is completely still. All at once, the lights flicker, and he knows better than to kid himself into thinking it’s just faulty electricity—when the Wall broke, so did whatever was keeping her freaky ESP dormant. It’s making her worse, he’s pretty sure.

Sometimes he wishes Cas could be resurrected just so he could kill the guy all over again.

Eventually, he glances at Bobby, who gives him a short nod, and asks her, “Sammy, what were you saying about me being an idiot?”

Though it takes a moment, she ends up tearing her eyes away from her hands again and back to him. “Besides, you’re annoying when you’re high,” she answers, continuing in the middle of the conversation like she hadn’t stopped talking in the first place. She doesn’t say what happened. “Last time you kept trying to tell me cake didn’t taste good.”

“That’s because it doesn’t.”

He tries to sound normal, but doesn’t do as well as he wanted. Bobby shoots him another glance and goes back to scribbling and Sam fiddles with the edge of her shirt. Yeah, he totally wants to kill Cas twice over. And make it very, very painful.

 

 

Dean’s final witness is Dad. Sam might be crueler than entirely necessary, but it keeps her brother safe and that’s what matters.

 

 

Finally, Dean Winchester manages to phone him _during the day._ Victor feels like this should be a call for celebration or some shit like that.

“Don’t worry, I’ve already destroyed the evidence,” he tells him, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m going out on a limb for you on this one.”

“ _Without me even having to tell you it’s not us? Wow, I feel so special._ ”

Well, he can picture Dean making a face that damn cocky, but the guy doesn’t know how to wink properly, and Sam doesn’t know how to smile and not look like a five-year-old. It doesn’t take a genius to realize it’s not them. “Just tell me what they are.”

To his surprise, Dean puts the phone on speaker. For half an hour he has to listen to the Winchester siblings explain about pre-Biblical monsters that can only be neutralized but not killed by beheading, and Victor really just wants to shoot something by the time they hang up.

 

 

At lot of days now, it’s hard to get Sam to smile, so it takes all of Dean’s self-control not to hug her when she actually manages to _laugh_ during their hunt in Lily Dale. Considering that it’s a case dealing with psychics and she’s starting to control things with her mind again whenever she gets agitated (which is often), he honestly thought this would spiral her into a panic attack. “What’s so funny?” he asks as they leave the museum and she stops.

“Nothing,” she says and to his even greater surprise, she takes his hand. His number one method of calming her down has always been touching her, but Lucifer took that away from them, too. “It’s just—those two pretended to be siblings to hide being together, and we pretend to be together to hide that we’re siblings.”

 Yeah, the irony wasn’t lost on him either. “And now we’re about to gank a pair of sisters,” he says. “This place is fucking ridiculous.”

“Come on, we haven’t had a ridiculous hunt in a while.”

“I don’t know, the hunt with the witches was pretty damn stupid.”

“Hey, you weren’t the one who had to do marriage counseling.”

They head off to the graveyard during the dead middle of the day together and normally he isn’t the hold handing type, but right now he’ll grab onto whatever he can because it never lasts for long.

 

 

“Sam, I need you to calm down.”

Fucking Becky. Fucking Vegas. And fucking Crossroads Demons. His sister up and disappeared while going to the store, a walk she insisted she could do by herself, and spent the past week drugged on a deal. That rookie Garth is somewhere behind him, standing awkward, and Sam’s gone through this _too many damn times._

Everything in the room rattles and she covers her ears with her hands. If the demon were in the room right now, Dean has a feeling it would at least by choking by this point. Though it took until midway through the Apocalypse, she finally told him what Ruby said—that the demon blood was never necessary in the first place. Right now is basically proof and he’s about half a second away from freaking out because he thought they were done with this. They were _supposed_ to be done with this. The Apocalypse was over, Lucifer dead, he shot Azazel himself years ago, and a picture on the mantelpiece just threw itself off of its own accord.

Garth asks what’s going on. Sam starts mumbling in a steady stream of Enochian, which means she’s seriously far gone. “We’re close to a demon, what do you expect?” he snaps because he doesn’t want to deal with someone else. “Just…go find something to make an invisible devil’s trap. I’m fine on my own.”

At least the kid’s smart enough to scramble out without another word. Even though he doesn’t speak Enochian, he catches Michael’s name a few times and the only two things he knows about Sam’s time in the Cage are that Adam’s soul made it to Heaven and for some reason Michael protected her. “This is real,” he says, though he’s pretty sure that’s lost its effectiveness by now. “You don’t need him, Lucifer’s all in your head. Sam, you have to calm—I can’t believe I’m about to do this.”

This episode’s been going on for ten minutes and he doesn’t know how many more objects in this room or her own brain can take this, so he grabs the knife off the table and pulls her right arm near him, slashing across it near her elbow. Abruptly, everything stops shaking, her breathing goes back to normal, she shuts up. Hell, she even manages to open her eyes, and that’s a downright miracle.

“This is real,” she repeats quietly, but when she looks at him, her eyes are clear. “No one’s coming because you’re already here.”

“Yeah, Sammy, that’s right. I’m not going anywhere.”

She reaches out with her hand shaking to touch her face like she has to make sure. Blood drips from her arm to her jeans, but when she makes herself smile, he makes himself smile back.

 

 

Later, Sam will let herself feel it. For now, she has to be here for Dean. Same as with Dad, Ellen, and Jo, Bobby liked him best.

After he dies, she takes care of everything. Lucifer reminds her that less than a week before her friend betrayed her to let him in, she was laughing and drinking champagne. He says that Michael tried to make it more realistic to her life this time so that when he tore it down, it would hurt less, and asks her if it worked. If she wasn’t talking to a doctor, she’d press down on the scar on her hand so hard she’d make it bleed.

By this point she’s so used to the sight of blood that she doesn’t care. She hasn’t for years.

Dr. Sullivan asks, “Are you planning on doing the burial here in New Jersey, or do you want him transferred back to South Dakota?”

His house is burned down. There’s nothing left for him there besides Jody. “We’ll do it here, thank you,” she answers. It’ll be easier to burn his bones and just give him a headstone next to his wife that way, anyway. “Um, I suppose as his niece I’ll be the one accepting the death certificate.” She burned Dean’s the same way she burned the pamphlets when she was eighteen.

Half an hour later someone gets it to her and she almost falls down when she sees the date. “What’s wrong?” Sullivan says as she steadies herself against the wall.

DOD, apparently, is May 2. “Today’s my twenty-eighth birthday,” she answers faintly, and knows she’s burning this one too.

Lucifer runs his fingers through her hair so, so gently, and asks if she’s ready to come away with him.

 

 

Last Jody had heard of Sam, she’d gone insane because she’d spent a while down in Hell or something like that. She isn’t surprised when the girl zones out while trying to find Dean. As a cop, Jody’s seen enough sufferers of PTSD to know the signs.

“Don’t make me use my mom voice,” she says, crossing her arms, once she snaps the girl out of it. Her father had served in Vietnam before she was born, and she’d had a lot of practice. “Go get some sleep, Sam.”

“But Dean—”

“You won’t find him any faster running on empty.”

For a moment, Sam looks like she’s about to argue, but eventually sighs and agrees.

 

 

They find an abandoned warehouse with a lot of stairs and light a bunch of flashlights so they can see. “I feel like I’m seven,” Sam says, sitting next to him at the top as she pulls the giant slinky out. Honestly, he doesn’t care what age she feels like; the purpose was the make her smile, and she is. “God, when was the last time we’ve even touched one of these?”

“Stanford, your second year,” he answers and can’t believe he even remembers. “You forgot it was my birthday.”

“Really?”

Oh, shit. The fact that he remembers something she doesn’t is practically reason to set off the alarm. He’s got a good memory, always has, but it’s nothing compared to hers. “You don’t…?”

“I—” She looks down at her lap and rubs the scar on her hand, which is never a good sign. “Sometimes things get scrambled around. It’s like I’ve got too much in my head and not enough places to put everything.”

Right. They haven’t actually talked about how long she was down there, but he can do the math using the two minutes equals one week equation and the result wasn’t pretty. How she can keep anything straight is a mystery he isn’t questioning. “There’s not much to remember,” he lies, because in a way there kind of is. They didn’t have a lot of nights like that while she was at school. “We just hung out in your dorm hall at two in the morning playing with a giant slinky.”

“With Jessica?”

“No, not with Jessica.”

“Oh.”

There’s an awkward silence before he decides this is losing track of what he was trying to achieve and he lets go of the slinky. It flops down the stairs, one at the time, catching the light of the flashlights and making new shadows with every pass, and Sam doesn’t touch her scar for the rest of the night. He’s pretty sure that counts as progress.

 

 

After three nights, Dean figures out she isn’t sleeping. Sam knew it wasn’t going to take long, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. God, she’s such a fucking idiot. “It was to get you back,” she tells him when he confronts her about it on the fourth day and she already feels like she’s about to topple over from her caffeine intake. “He wasn’t shutting up and I needed to concentrate, so I let him help out and now I can’t make him go away.”

He grabs her by the shoulders, rougher than he usually does, and they don’t really touch anymore to begin with. “You know he’s not real, right?” he says, because they both use the word “real” a lot.

For the first, she decides to say fuck it, and shakes her head. Lucifer breaks mid-song and cheers in glee behind her. “I don’t,” she answers bluntly. “I haven’t been sure since Bobby died.”

Lucifer says he’s probably not really dead, if that makes her feel better. That he and the real Dean are back on Earth, happy without her because all anyone’s ever wanted was for her to get rid of herself. If he’s telling the truth, if he’s the one that’s real, then this is longest of this sort of mind game he’s played on her since the first five hundred years. She wonders if it’s because he got bored with making her care about him, or if Michael did something to piss him off and this is a different sort of revenge.

Face pale, Dean drops his hands. “That was two months ago.”

“He died on my birthday,” she says. “You already did once, and so did I. That just doesn’t feel real.”

For the first time in forever, he pulls her into a hug and she has to stop herself from freezing her up. “I’ll fix this, Sam,” he says quietly. “I swear to God.”

 

 

Seeing Sam all in white hurts, even though it’s been years and what she’s wearing definitely isn’t a wedding dress and they aren’t in a rose garden. As her next of kin and since she was forcibly signed in instead of going as her own free will, Dean has to fill out some questionnaire thing for her. He put her under her real name, too, so they get some of the facts straight, and tell them she’s his wife. What happened is the result of being stuck for three years with her serial killer brother, the psychiatrist figures, and that makes Dean pretty much want to kill him then and there.

Sure, he’s fucked up when it comes to her plenty of times, but he’d _never_ do this to her. Leave that to Lucifer and whatever psycho daddy issues he has.

“Can I see her now?” he asks after he signs his name Michael Smith (it seemed appropriate) and hands it off to the guy. “She doesn’t like being apart from me. I should at least tell her I won’t be around for tonight.”

 Of every therapist/psychiatrist/psychologist he’s ever met, this is the first one whose sympathy actually seems genuine. Hopefully Sam won’t be here long, but it could be worse. “You know where her room is,” the doctor answers. “The sedatives are still in her system, even if they didn’t work, so don’t worry if it takes her a moment to answer you.”

Don’t worry, pal, he thinks, I’m already used to it.

And damn if that isn’t the saddest thing he’s thought in a while.

 

 

While Dean threats to sue in order to get her AMA under the grounds she got electrocuted on their watch, Meg helps Sam pull on a change of real clothes. Even though Clarence fixed whatever’s wrong with that broken mind of hers, she’s still weak and disoriented. “Why do you help us?” she asks and surrenders buttoning her jacket to Meg.

“Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean I don’t understand family, little sister,” she answers, and finishes.

“Yeah, about that.” Sam rubs one eye and it’s ridiculous how Nickelodeon she can be sometimes. “What do you mean? Were you…like me?”

Now that’s a story for another time once the girl’s gotten maybe two weeks long of solid sleep. As a demon, Meg doesn’t have to sleep, but she knows humans do. “Not exactly, but Father Dearest gave you an energy drink of his blood, which means you’re my half-sister.”

To her surprise, Sam reaches out and hugs her. She so fails on the lieutenant Girl Queen of Hell front, even if she is technically Meg’s heir as rightful ruler. She wonders if Sam’ll ever figure out that technically she’s exiled royalty, too. “Thanks,” she says, letting go. “You’ve been better to the two of us than I think the majority of my human family.”

“I’ve noticed.” Grandpappy Samuel had been a right dick if there ever was one. “Anyway, get your ass out of here. I’ve got the rest of humanity and a broken Christmas ornament to deal with.”

Sam puts her number into her phone first and tells her to call if she needs anything, even if it’s just a break in monotony. Meg’s actually a little flattered she trusts her.

 

 

It’s not until after Charlie says goodbye to the Winchesters that she realizes everything that just happens sounds an awful lot like a book series she sees a lot about on tumblr. She’s never read it herself, but some of the people she follows do and wasn’t there that meta one where the author met them and it turned out they were real and Carver was a prophet or something? And another one with a convention?

She runs to the nearest Barnes and Noble once she’s off the book and buys the first five _Supernatural_ books. Before she even makes it through the first chapter she realizes that yes, these are the same people and that yes, she was absolutely right about something weird going on top of the whole sibling thing. Goddamn, she just met Sam and Dean, hunter babies, and didn’t even know enough to fangirl.

Oh, shit, did Sam’s roommate just burn to death on the ceiling?

 

 

Kevin watches the two people who’re supposed to save the world from demons and monsters and other weird stuff that shouldn’t exist fight over trapping a demon. Less than five hours with them and he already realizes that they’re weird as hell. Or Hell, he guess. Capitol letters now and all.

The brother says, “What, we haven’t learned our lesson yet with trusting demons, Sam? Really?”

Sam—the sister—sighs. “Dean, Meg just worked for a month taking care of an entire psychiatric ward to watch over Cas for us. She’s looking out for herself, not really for us.”

“And _that’s_ supposed to make us trust her?”

“Why would she hurt us if we’re useful? No devil’s trap. It’s not like they work all the time on her anyway, remember?”

They glare at each other for a moment before Dean gives up. Kevin never thought he’d say this about a brother/sister dynamic before, but he’s so whipped it’s not even funny.

 

 

When Sam saves Meg only a couple of hours after Dean and Cas explode along with Dick Roman, it’s a complete accident. She hit her head pretty bad, Lucifer’s back and rambling in the backseat, and she doesn’t see the other car until it’s so close they both have to swerve. She doesn’t crash, but apparently the demon isn’t as good of a driver, and the force sends an unconscious Meg through the windshield. Sam’s not really thinking about it when she knifes one demon in the stomach and the other in the throat.

She’s sick of everyone around her dying.

Half an hour later, Meg wakes up with a jolt and almost freaks out, which reverses the situation on Sam so much it’s almost funny. “You’re good, they’re dead,” she says, not looking over at the passenger Dean would so disapprove of and she can’t believe she’s doing this again. “The car’s protected. I locked you into the body so you could get through the wards like you did in mine. How do you do that, by the way?”

 Obviously still a little groggy, Meg pulls up her sleeve. The mark scarred on the unmarred skin of her host’s body. “Father was the Fallen Angel that caused the rest of them to decide to cut off contact with Earth for two thousand years until your brother got himself locked in Hell,” she answers, pushing her shirt back down. “I was the cause—a Nephilim.”

“A half angel?”

Meg nods and leans her head against the window. For the first time Sam realizes maybe she’s so weird because she went down to Hell just for existing, the way she originally would’ve until she started the Apocalypse and really deserved it. “Something must still be in the system making me a special snowflake because as long as I make my meatsuit my prison, wards don’t work. Where’s Big Brother and my pet angel?”

Heaven, Sam hopes. They definitely aren’t in Hell and it’s better than the alternative. She explains and Meg shoots her down by saying they probably ended up in Purgatory. But then she adds there might be a way to get them out and someone needs to save Clarence from all the things that go bump in the night.

She really can’t believe she’s doing this again, but she also really doesn’t care.

 

 

Dean almost kills Sam when she ends up in Purgatory and the only thing that stops him and gets him to check first is because she tells someone who isn’t there to shut up. Then Cas says her soul’s definitely there, Benny’s obviously confused as fuck, and he realizes that since his friend’s back to being sane, his sister’s back to, well, _not_ being, and it really is possible for his luck to get worse.

“How’d you get in here?” he asks, pulling her to him because God, he missed her. “You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

She clings back and her hair smells like strawberries. “Well, I may or may not have paired up with Meg after saving her from a group of demons—”

“You _what?_ ”

“It’s a long story,” she says quickly and she better have a damn good explanation for teaming up with another one of those, even if it _is_ Meg, who she’s always had a weird thing with. “Anyway, she suggested torturing a Crossroads Demon and she did and then we tricked a rogue reaper into telling me how to get in here and you’re like five miles from the very convenient exit point. Hi, Cas. Meg’s bizarrely excited to see you, but I don’t think she’ll like the beard. Hi, person I don’t know. Who are you?”

Dean gives a drive-by explanation of who Benny is and that they were originally looking for the human portal too and Sam doesn’t look happy, but at least she doesn’t protest because that would make her a damn hypocrite. “Is it seriously only five miles?” he says when he’s done.

Pointing to her right, she answers, “That way.”

 Awesome, so they’ve been going the wrong way for the past three days. “We should go,” Cas says suddenly, which means he hears something, which means five miles away while his sister has a gun evens out the odds. Working with Meg or not, he’s just glad he can get out of here. Hopefully she didn’t end the world in the process.

 

 

Cas let go.

Cas let _go._

Before he has a chance to freak out about it to his sister, though, he notices that something’s wrong. Really wrong, and it isn’t just the soul in his arm. Sam’s standing by a tree, holding what looks like a card, Meg’s nowhere to be seen.

“My cell phone says we were in there for four hours,” she says, not turning around, and her shoulders shake. “Four hours, guys, and I get—Dean, where’s Cas?”

 _The King always wins, darling_ , the card reads. “He let go.”

“He let— _why_?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, but he did and pushed me through. So I’ve got a vampire in my arm, a demon princess stolen by a demon king, and our best friend still caught in Purgatory. This thing doesn’t go both ways, does it?”

It doesn’t. He doesn’t need her to say it out loud for him to know. To his surprise, though, she pulls him down for a kiss. “It’s been six months,” she says. “I haven’t found Kevin yet, either, and now Crowley’s got Meg too. We need Meg to get Cas. But you’re back, and it didn’t take an Apocalypse to do it.”

Six months. That makes it late April. As long as he doesn’t die, this’ll be a good birthday present for once. “We’ll start with Louisiana. You’re seeing him again, aren’t you?” She nods without specification. “Right. Well, without needing to look for me and with my help, maybe we can find everyone.”

It feels like wishful thinking, but she just got him out of Purgatory with the Devil rattling around in her head. Between the two of them, maybe for once they can get it right.

 

 

Kevin gets himself out and calls Sam. Dean answers.

“ _We’re coming to get you_ ,” he says, and last Crowley said the guy exploded, but Kevin should’ve known better than the trust the one torturing him, right? Probably counts as a rookie mistake. “ _Stay where you are and ward yourself_.”

That’s how twenty-four hours later he finds himself sitting across from Dean while Sam gets them food, the result of a fight he could barely hear that ended with, “I survived six months standing on lines alone,” whatever that means. Crowley said she went crazy, but so far he can’t tell if that’s true. “So you were in Purgatory,” Kevin says, trying to get his mind around it and succeeding pretty easily because right now he’s down one girlfriend but Sam made her brother promise to bring him to his mom. “Not dead.”

With a shrug, Dean answers, “Sorry to disappoint, kid.”

He’s not exactly disappointed. They might not’ve sprung him, but they picked up on his first call. Sam comes back with food, there’s some sort of silent conversation, and she says, “I can’t exactly work up an appetite right now.” She doesn’t have anything for herself. “Anyway, Kevin. Remember that demon we were with? The little brunette one in nursing clothes? Her name’s Meg. Did you hear anything about her at all?”

Some of his time with Crowley is blurry, so he has to rack his brain, but comes up with nothing. “No,” he answers finally, and takes a bite of a burger. His girlfriend’s dead and he can still eat. Talk about being desensitized. “Why?”

“It’s nothing,” she says quickly. “Let’s just get back to you and your mom, okay?”

She starts out leading the conversation, but Dean takes over once she beings getting distracted. Maybe Crowley wasn’t lying after all.

 

 

Linda wishes there were better people in charge of taking care of her son than these two, but she supposes any type of protection is good. After the auction where she sold her soul for her son, which she doesn’t think the Winchesters understand any mother would do, and something pulled the demon right out of her body, Sam organizes a temporary safe house for them. “We’re on the road all the time,” she tells them, clearly agitated and Linda thinks she should just take a Xanax by this point. “I’m sorry, but right now this is the best we can do.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Kevin says, and puts down his bags. The place definitely looks and feels temporary, too. “Are you looking for the tablet?”

She nods and her brother comes up behind her, spray can still in hand. “We’ll find it,” he says. “Sammy here’s good at finding things.”

“Shut up, Dean.”

He ignores her. Linda has a sister she might never be able to see again. “Well, be careful,” she says, even though she doesn’t think they’ll need it. Dean looks like he’s about thirty, maybe a little older, and Sam’s in her mid-to-late twenties if she has to guess. Besides, according to her son, everyone wants them dead and that wouldn’t be the case if they weren’t good. But good at the job doesn’t mean good people.

They say they will and all exchange new phone numbers. Linda hopes they won’t have to use them for at least a little while.

 

 

This time around, dealing with Sam’s insanity is a little different. According to her, she doesn’t have the same real vs. not real anymore unless it’s an actual flashback and Lucifer isn’t around all that often, just when she gets too stressed. Basically, it’s “normal crazy,” or whatever that means.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean everything is easy. Just that they need to redefine their One Through Ten How Bad is It Scale. “Dean, I don’t think there’s a case here,” she says, even though it’s pretty obvious there is one. “It doesn’t seem—or, I don’t know.”

He glances around, makes sure no one is nearby, and pulls her off to the side. “Talk to me, Sam,” he says because after Bobby’s death they lost some communication for a while and that was hard to handle. “What’s going on with you?”

“Sorry,” she answers, and her hands shake. “I’m having trouble concentrating, I guess. I’ll be fine, though.”

She doesn’t look like she’ll be fine. “All right,” he says anyway, and brushes her hair out of her face. “Well, there’s a case. Trust me on that and we’ll finish it quick.”

When she nods, she looks like she’s about to cry. At least it isn’t as bad as last time, he reminds himself, but it doesn’t make him feel any better.

 

 

So apparently Benny’s in trouble or something. Considering that Sam’s curled up on their bed back in Rufus’ cabin with a wound from a ghoul that tried to take a chunk out of her torso, she can’t do anything. The thing led them into a slaughterhouse, which caused a flashback; it was such an easy opening she’s actually ashamed.

She doesn’t like feeling like she constantly needs saving. Since her Wall cracked the first time, she’s been more of a hindrance than a help.

As he throws his bag over his shoulder, Dean says, “I’ll be back soon. Just stay here and heal up—and call the _moment_ you think you’re getting worse. If you get worse.”

Even though she wants to tell him she’ll be fine and she can come, she knows she’ll only make it harder. Still, it stings a little that he’s leaving her alone like this. “I won’t get worse.”

He leans over and gives her a quick kiss goodbye that only makes her feel more useless. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Fucking hypocrite.”

Of course, he just ignores her. The moment he shuts the door and leaves her to silence, Lucifer starts singing “Heat of the Moment.” When she checks her phone, she sees it’s a Tuesday.

A lot of days she wishes she could shut her eyes and never wake up.

 

 

The five of them sit around in a small circle after Crowley leaves and still no Meg. “What’re we supposed to do with half a tablet?” Sam says to take her mind off this. “Do you think it’ll cut off in the middle of sentences?”

Kevin takes it away from her. “I won’t know until I try,” he answers and squints. “At least Crowley can’t read his.”

"We got half of it back, so we’ll get the other half back too,” Dean says and glances over at Cas. He was pissed about Cas’ lack of explanation of how he got out when he deliberately let go in the first place. “Just trust us on this one, kid.”

They bring the Trans out for pizza and Sam actually eats a slice. Eventually they’ll find a real safe house, but for now they’ll have to make due.

 

 

Really, she never thought she’d use this as a bargaining chip for her life before, but Abaddon is really starting to piss her off. “I’m fucking _Samantha Winchester_ ,” she says, trying to make the demon shup up. “I don’t care if you’re from the Fifties, if you don’t know my name, you should at least be figure out who I am because of my blood.”

Abaddon grabs her rough by the arm and pulls her close, nails biting into her skin and really, Sam’s dealt with worse in the past few hours. Getting kidnapped and needing Dean to save her _again_ was so not on her to-do list. “This is Azazel’s blood,” the demon says eventually, dropping her back to the ground. “You’re—oh, you’re _that_ one.” She smiles. “Looks like I just met Hell’s little celebrity. Tell me, where’s my king? Why aren’t you by his side?”

“Dead,” Sam answers. “Shot in the face. Alistair’s dead too, and the angel who wanted the ride my skin? Where he started.”

To her surprise, Abaddon doesn’t hit her again, though for all she knows hurting her is breaking some sort of demon code she never heard of. Lucifer had about a hundred set up special for her to begin with. He liked to remind her in Cage to prove he cared. Abaddon says, “If Azazel’s gone, then where’s your sister?”

“MIA. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Are we done with Twenty Questions or are you keeping me here forever?” She really needs Dean to hurry up and get here, well, now. Yeah, now sounds nice.

Then he is here, and Henry’s dead, but Abaddon’s decapitated, and Sam still doesn’t know where Meg is. Her family tree’s been shrinking since she was six months old and she’s not in the mood to lose anyone else.

 

 

Even though there are important things to do and people to save, they spend the first day just with each other. Dean gets Chinese from a place they discover in town and Sam cleans the place up because it’s so filled with dust she can hardly breathe. When he comes back, he helps her, and after they collapse in some random room together on a very uncomfortable bed, food cartons at the ready. One thing that’s easier this time around is getting her to eat and it’s a relief watching her pick up the chopsticks and pop open one of her vegetable noodle things he doesn’t understand the point of.

“You know, Sammy, this is the dead middle of the country and no one knows about it,” he says, stabbing at his sweet and sour chicken. “Makes a better home base than random motels.”

She’s got her hair pulled away from her face in some messy bun thing and only has on one of his t-shirts and a pair of underwear. And fuck, he knows she doesn’t see it, especially now with the Devil sporadically whispering in her ear, but she really is just so damn beautiful. “We’re finding a room with a more comfortable mattress first,” she tells him, and takes a sip of her water. Chinese food and water. Twenty-nine and still an amateur. “I swear, I’m actually on a rock right now.”

“We could buy one,” he says, though he feels a little uncertain because this place is legally theirs, so he’s willing to make it a permanent thing, but Sam sometimes lapses on the weirdest shit. “A real one, I mean. Splurge or whatever the civvie word for being an idiot with money is.”

Sam smiles, small and close-lipped. “Okay,” she answers. “There’s got to be something out there more comfortable to have sex on than this.”

It takes actual effort to keep moving like normal. “You’re up to that?” She’s better at letting him touch her this time around and within the first couple of days she was fine getting him off, but the moment he tries to get his hands under _her_ clothes, she freaks.

“Well, I’m doing a lot better,” she says, touching stray hair behind her ear. “Or, I feel like I am anyway. I’d be willing to give it a shot if you are.”

Before he got too close to exploding Dick, they got a short three weeks where she could actually handle doing anything, and that was a long time ago by his standards, so he answers, “I’m willing,” faster than he probably should.

Her kiss tastes like peanut butter sauce and it’s stupid the number of times they’ve had to give each other up.

 

 

After they get back from the Cassity farm, Dean peels off her bloody shirts and uses a wet wash cloth in the shower to scrub the blood. She appreciates it, because she keeps seeing the hellhound attacking him every time she shuts her eyes and it’s making it very difficult to concentrate. More than once she hears it howl, too.

Now they’ve got Memory Foam instead of the rock hard mattress of the first night here, and that counts as comfortable. Her whole body aches, but Dean lays her out and kisses down her wet skin.

The pain keeps Lucifer and flashbacks away, and for a few short hours, this night belongs to her.

 

 

Reliving the Cage because of her own mind is one thing, but there’s a special brand of difficulty with dealing with memories brought on by a spell. And she feels fucking awful, because she knows Dean saw stuff too, and he’s got his baggage, but after the familiars and the witches and the spells, she’s panicking so bad they can’t even leave the motel without risking her breaking down the car on the side of the road or something.

Demon blood powers. They’ll never stop being a pain in the ass.

He keeps himself in front of her so she can see his face, which helps. “You told me you can tell what’s real,” he says, steering her over to the bed and sitting her down. She feels like everyone is always sitting her down. “You know _that_ wasn’t real, right?”

Over his shoulder, Lucifer picks at something on the sheet and asks her how many people she thinks were ever murdered under this bed. The number three pops into her head and she doesn’t know if that’s because it’s true or because the hallucination put it there.

Hallucination. Right. “Wasn’t real,” she gets out, though it’s a struggle. “This is. You—This room is what’s real.”

“Not the Cage.” She shakes her head and starts breathing easier. “Good, just like that, Sammy. Think you’re ready to leave yet?” Again, she shakes her head, and only feels worse about it. “That’s fine. We can wait here.”

They do. Dean keeps up a steady stream of nonsense conversation, holding her hand, and doesn’t complain as she squeezes it when she coughs up blood. Doesn’t even call  her out of it. Later he will, but not now, and she can deal with that.

 

 

A while ago, Crowley told Meg that Sam had died getting her brother out of her Purgatory. So really, fuck however demons are supposed to act, if she wants to hug her sister back, she can do it.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” Sam says later while spray painting warding symbols on the wall of whatever warehouse they find themselves planted at this time. For some reason, they end up in a lot of these. “We, uh, kind of lost your trail for a while after we found Kevin.”

Oh yeah, Crowley had Mr. Baby Prophet too. Fucking asshole doesn’t know how to run Hell right, makes too much of mess. When Father was alive, he was a dick, but at least he kept an order of thing—until he decided feeding demon blood to babies was a good idea. Worst decision he made since he was an angel and fucked around with Meg’s mother to have her and got himself kicked out of Heaven.

Whatever. At least she got Sam out of it.

With a shrug, she answers, “I’m a demon, sweetheart. I can take a little pain.”

Sam frowns. “Doesn’t mean you should.”

Last time they saw each other, Sam played Hercules and threw herself into the afterlife to save her brother. Actually, maybe that makes her Orpheus. Psyche? Not that it matters. “So what have you and your personal guard dog been up to  while I was stuck in Crowley’s latest hideout?”

She explains a bit about protecting Kevin before pausing and adding, “We’re, uh, also planning on boarding up Hell. Since you’re weird by demon standards, will that keep you out? Because I’m not up to shooting you back downstairs.”

Before she can answer that she really doesn’t know and she really doesn’t care because if she does, that the Winchesters can just give her that knife of theirs and she’ll kill Crowley to take back what’s hers, he shows up. Sam reaches out to grab her hand the moment she tells her sister to run. “Fuck that, you’re with me,” she says, and pulls her along.

Somehow, Crowley gets stuck in place. It’s more than just a little satisfying to watch.

 

 

“Untie me.”

Victor cuts himself off, quirks a brow, and looks down at Samantha. She was perfectly civil to him until not long ago, but allowed herself to get caught with relative easy, despite the rumors of being such a legendary hunter. He never quite believed it all anyway. “I need you like this right now,” he tells her. “Asking won’t help.”

Her eyes dart between him and a spot not far beyond him, but from the opposite side of Seth. “I _really_ don’t like being tied up, and I’m _really_ not feeling one hundred percent to begin with,” she answers, and he does feel a bit guilty when he notices her breathing is getting tight and her hands are starting to shake. He hadn’t meant for it to come to this, but even though she and her brother might not live up to reputation, they’re still good. “I’m saying this for your own safety, Victor— _untie me._ ”

Before he can even finish asking what she means, the lights around him flicker. A long time ago someone told him the Winchester girl could control things with her mind, but that’s ridiculous. A hunter should’ve gotten her by now. “Stop that,” he says. “All you’re doing is making what I say true.”

“You don’t get it, I can’t. I’m trying not to panic, but it isn’t working out all that well.”

Then, from the side, “You have no idea what you just stepped yourself into.”

Dean’s there, gun already in hand, with Victor’s three horrified children standing guarded behind him. Less than twenty-four hours and the Winchesters have ruined everything he worked for.

Maybe their reputations aren’t so inaccurate after all.

 

 

One day in normal Hell is about three months. For Sam, this is practically nothing. It would be a lot easier if Lucifer would just shut up. And if he didn’t feel more real than he has in about a year.

He reminds her, somewhere around the second week when she continuously bypasses every security system Hell has, that she’s now the only heir to the rightful ruler of the throne.

“I disowned that part of myself before I even knew it existed,” she says quietly, and ducks down through an alley way. The Corridor of Innocent Souls is built like more of a labyrinth than the hallway Meg said it was. Ever since she entered this place, the dead’ve been reaching through their bars and calling out to her, saying they’ve been waiting for her to come. Lucifer says it’s because she’s the one who’s supposed to save them. “And I’m just in here for Bobby.”

Ever so often, she hears Jess, but she hears Dad and Dean too, so common sense alone tells her not to follow the voice. Bobby, she reminds herself. She’s here for Bobby. When Lucifer says she shouldn’t bother because it’s not like he loved her best, it takes a lot of effort not to turn around and slap him.

It’s not like would help. “Leave me alone, Luci.”

She thinks she feels his hand on her shoulder and has to remind herself it’s not really there. He says he can’t leave because she’s the one keeping him there. That somewhere deep down she still misses him and wants his around.

Thankfully she finds Bobby’s door before she needs to answer.

 

 

It’s not until after Charlie leaves and Sam’s half unconscious on their bed that the fully gravity of the situation fully hits Dean. “She read the books,” he says out loud, more to himself than to her, and sits up. “Goddamn, she read those books.”

Sam’s hand sweeps against his side and her eyes are half closed and unfocused. Every day she’s getting worse. Having Meg around surprisingly makes it easier, but it’s not like demons have healing powers. “I know,” she answers, but the words come out only partially formed and slightly stilted against her pillow.

“No, but, Sammy, think about how freaky in depth those books go.” He doesn’t mention Charlie also made it sound like now they went through the Apocalypse too, even though Chuck said he wouldn’t publish anymore. When Sam told Meg what the books were, the bitch actually laughed. “The guy went so far that he wrote us having sex. That makes a human being besides Bobby who knows we suck at being siblings.”

Her eyes are open fully now, and it’s like watching someone go from non-sober to sober because of shocking news. “Dean, that’s not just _one_ human,” she says. “That’s a lot of humans. People read those books.”

Fuck, he hadn’t thought about that. “We’ll just make sure no one else important ever gets their hands on those,” he tells her because he shudders at the idea of Kevin finding them. “I don’t care about anyone else.”

She coughs, and it’s wet sounding and racks at her body, but nothing comes out. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Night, Dean.”

This Trials sickness makes her act like a little kid sometimes. “Night, Sammy,” he says quietly, and moves her hair out of her face.

 

 

Hairdryers are a thing of beauty, Dean thinks as he moves it over his sister’s head. After those first few minutes of lucidity where she was able to speak normal and keep focus and everything, the cold and sickness got to her, and she’s been speaking in Enochian and only half-aware of what’s going on ever since. And it’s kind of especially depressing this time, because he makes out his name just fine, and she keeps looking at him like she doesn’t get why he can’t answer her. It’s like she doesn’t realize they’re speaking two different languages.

He makes himself smile even though he has no idea what the fuck she just said. “Almost dry, Sam,” he says, and curses the fact that an angel’s involved on this time. Cas is still missing and because Heaven and demons don’t mix, Meg bailed on them. Because of Sam, Dean’s been able to pick up on a little Enochian here and there, but they’re mostly words like “stop” and “hurt.”

He also knows how to say “I love you.” He doesn’t like the implications.

 

 

Meg offers herself up as a test run for the third Trial because really? She’s tired. She’s two thousand years old and never cared about being Queen until Lilith decided she was competition and dragged her down to torture her. Now Crowley’s done the same, is presumably still out for her blood, and if reverting back to her half-angel, half-human state is the only way to be done with Hell, then she’s doing it. Because Hell’s Hell, even for demons.

Even though Sam’s doing the Trial, Dean sets her up for the cure. “Sam says you were a Nephilim or something,” he says some time around her fourth injection after her sister fell asleep on one of the pews. Every so often she’ll cough and blood will trickle out, but she doesn’t wake up.

Yeah, Meg is so over and done with Hell by this point. “That’s right,” she answers. “I was at modern day Mount Arbel when the Romans smoked us out—that’s in Israel, by the way. The human part of me meant choking on smoke was still painful and getting skewered in the heart could kill me.”

He sits on the pew next to Sam. Meg isn’t in a devil’s trap. “Did you have wings?” he asks. “I mean, when we cure you, _will_ you have wings?”

With a shrug, she says, “Two Romans pined me to the mountain wall and a third cut them off. Usually I kept them bound down so no one would see, but I figured I could fly away. I guess we’ll find out if curing will bring them back.”

Six hours later she’s cured.

She has no wings, and her back starts bleeding.

 

 

Meg, human and good and whatever now, says she’ll stay with Sam to help her in case she starts to fall over or something, so Dean feels safe if not reluctant to go with Cas. He’s not expecting to find out from Naomi that the whole purpose of these Trials is for Sam to die, again.

He tells Cas to bring him back, because she won’t stop if she doesn’t know. But then he enters the church and—

“So?”

 

 

Of all humans in the world, Samantha Winchester is the one mostly likely to be able to contain him, even in this weakened state. Unfortunately, her brother is not yet convinced.

He feels unclean when he tells Dean, “With the angels cast out and Heaven boarded off, Joshua is no longer there to allow her soul passage into Heaven after death.”

For a moment, the man says nothing. “Are you saying an angel needs to let her into Heaven?” he asks when his contemplation is finished. “After she jumped into the Cage to stop the Apocalypse? That’s— _she’s seriously supposed to go to Hell?_ ”

“No, not Hell,” he answers, even though this is a lie because Hell is exactly where she is supposed to go without intervention. Politics are not a human invention and Heaven and Hell have always taken theirs very seriously when it comes to the matter of souls, even during accounts of thievery. “The Cage.”

“Do it,” Dean says without hesitation. “I don’t care; I’m not letting her go back down there.”

They discuss what to say and Gadreel enters her mind. She holds counsel with Death, who sees his true form, and allows him to proceed as planned. Perhaps this means he is doing the right thing.

 

 

Sam, once again, feels completely useless. While she was passed out, Dean had to take care of three demons alone. “You woke up from Hell’s Obstacle Course two days ago, Sammy,” he says after they dropped off Tracey, who rightfully hates her, because this fuck up will haunt her until the day she dies. Which was supposed to be a couple of days ago, like he said. “You can’t expect to be one hundred percent right away.”

This doesn’t make her any less upset, and she notices the distinct lack of Lucifer sitting in the backseat. Usually when she’s feeling this down is when he makes an appearance. Maybe this means the Trials cured up one thing, at least.

God, she hopes so.

 

 

They find Cas, save him, and then he and Meg run off together to get jobs and buy houses like they’re normal humans. Dean finds this a lot funnier than Sam does, because Cas decided to up and leave without so much as a goodbye. He just sort of left by saying he wanted to do so as soon as possible and didn’t want to trouble her by waking her up because all she seems to be able to do lately is sleep.

At least Meg said goodbye before taking off too because, as she put it, _someone needs to make sure Clarence doesn’t kill himself with a toaster oven._ Sam’s not in the mood to do much of anything after that, and Dean leaves her alone. When she wakes up the next morning, it’s obvious he slept there, but he’s gone again. The clock reads _8:04._

Without meaning to, she rolls over and goes back to sleep for another two hours. It’s easier than thinking.

 

 

When Charlie sees what Sam picked out at random apparently to watch, she quickly snatches the RedBox DVD from her hand. “You know, I have an HDMI cord I can hook up to your laptop,” she says. “I don’t really think you’d like this.”

The two exchange a glance and because the books are supposedly so accurate she can pretty much imagine how the whole silent conversation’s going down. “What for?” Dean asks. “I know people die a lot, but do you really think we’re squeamish?”

Okay, so Charlie’s not really the hesitating type unless it comes to the subject of her sexuality in the workplace, but she hesitates for real before answering, “There’s kind of sort of completely consensual incest going so far as resulting in the two having children in this.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “You literally just up and admitted you read the books,” she says. “Do you really think incest will bother us?”

“They’re the antagonists.”

Now it’s their turn to hesitate and she totally gets it. “I think we can handle it,” Dean says eventually, but Charlie notices his hand goes to the small of Sam’s back and god, the internet must’ve totally ruined her or something because she finds them adorable, incest be damned. “Just put it in.”

As she does, Sam adds, “Thanks for the head’s up, though.”

She cuddles up against her brother’s side when Charlie hits play and maybe she’ll save mentioning all the torture for later.

 

 

Dean gets that Ezekiel was really weak and all when he decided to take Sammy for a joyride, but he thought the whole waking up with a fever thing was done and over with. Then again, the timing is so damn perfect it’s practically a gift in disguise, and he thinks maybe it’s on purpose.

The idea that the angel can control his sister’s health isn’t a fun one.

Not long before he leaves, he calls Kevin over to him, even though Sam’s three rooms away and absolutely out of earshot. “She’ll want to help,” he says, frustrated but knowing Cas calling is serious. “This is Sam, she can hunt even with her lungs collapsing so really she’ll be fine, but—”

“Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself?” Kevin’s tone is blunt. Dean nods. “It’s just a fever, she’ll be fine.”

The kid’s never seen her sister before, so he doesn’t know. “If she gets hot enough, we’ll lose a couple of light bulbs,” he tells him. “Also, do me a favor and promise me that if she starts speaking nonsense in Enochian that you’ll call me instead of dealing with it on your own.”

Kevin agrees, though he still sounds skeptical. For his sake, Dean hopes he never has to find out what he’s talking about.

 

 

After seeing all the rewards and hearing a couple of stories of Dean’s time here, Sam’s starting to wonder if Sonny hates her. From the sound of it, he made all this progress, made Dean start to see that maybe Dad wasn’t such a good guy, and then he showed up in the Impala and almost got turned away but no, of course he didn’t, because she was in the backseat reading some book Bobby gave her. Maybe that’s why Dean introduced her as his girlfriend instead of his sister for the first time since her Trials sickness started and he started feeling like touching her would shatter her again, even when surrounded by people. Because this definitely not an out-of-trust sort of thing.

At one point some chick named Robin, who Dean dated for half a second and has made this situation incredibly awkward, asks, “So how long have you been together?”

Her real age makes her illegal in certain states and she doesn’t know her brother’s lie from that time, so she answers, “About twelve years.” Barring the year before the Apocalypse where they were kind of broken up and the two years they were actually together when she was sixteen and seventeen.

“Oh,” the other woman says, “impressive. You’re in the FBI, too?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Not putting my degree to much use, but it could be worse. So how well did you know the victim?”

She can tell Robin wants to ask about what she means by degree, but Sam’s shifted the conversation back to the investigation, so she doesn’t. This is good, because Sam’s not really up to an interrogation right now. All she wants is Dean, but Dean’s halfway across the farm and halfway across a childhood from here.

It’s been a long time since she’s been this lied to and judged, and she doesn’t like the feeling.

 

 

Before Dean goes ahead with the plan, he’s nervous enough to double check the room. He almost misses it, but on the way out he catches sight of the smudge.

Well, damn, he thinks as he fixes it, and knows that could have gone very, very wrong.

 

 

When Sam wakes up after rejecting the latest psychotic supernatural _thing_ from her body, her lungs feel tight and Dean’s asleep on the chair next to her. She reaches over and shakes his knee awake, sitting up as she does so and ignoring the head rush she gets from it. Despite being tired all the time, she’d felt better the past few weeks than she had in a long time. Now that she knows why, she’d rather have just been sick.

She’d rather have been dead.

Dean steadies her once she’s up. That’s when she notices there’s no IV in her arm. “How long have I been out?” she asks.

“Not long,” he answers, though he looks like he’s ready to run away. Well, sucks for him because she’s not letting him. Not this time. “Only about twelve hours. What do you remember?”

“Everything, now. You’ve never had an angel leave your body, but it doesn’t get any easier the second time around, Dean.” At least he has the decency to look guilty about it. When he brought her back to life last time he didn’t even apologize. “So why’d you do it? I was dying—I was _fine_ with that. You didn’t have the right to take that choice away from me.”

For a while he’s quiet and she’s too tired to think of any rebuttals to bullshit excuses of why she’s never allowed to make her own choices, but maybe that’s a good thing, because he says, “Originally I wasn’t going to. Then he told me that until Joshua’s back in Heaven to intervene, you couldn’t make it up there on your own. And that since you’ve already spent so much time there, you’d go back to the Cage, not just to Hell,” and she doesn’t think she could take that if she was lucid enough to panic. He looks up at her and his mouth twists. “I don’t know if he was lying or what, but you can’t ask me to risk that.”

She expected to be mad. She expected to be mad for _days_ and on a certain level, she is, because he lied to her all over again and she thought they were done with that, but she gets it. If she thought he was going to Hell, she’d do whatever it took to keep him alive. And really? She might be all for dying, but there’s a difference between being suicidal and being a willing volunteer to head back down to eternal torment. With Lucifer.

“Did anyone get hurt?” she says instead because she doesn’t want to talk about the Cage now that there’s no angel blocking the memories. Dean shakes his head. “Okay, at least there’s that. I’m going to be sick again, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” he answers. “Yeah, probably. Or—I don’t know. I called Cas to see if he can figure out. He got his Grace back. Won’t tell me how, but Meg thinks it’s funny and he called it ‘barbaric’ so I don’t know what to think.”

“Dean, you should’ve told me.”

He stops talking and she looks down at the blanket. “I know.” Then, after a moment, he adds, “I’ll sleep in one of the other rooms tonight.”

Quickly shaking her head, she says, “Don’t. If I start going crazy again because of this, I need someone to wake me up.”

It comes out more bitter than she means it to be and though he agrees, he doesn’t look happy. She’s too tired to feel satisfied about that.

 

 

“You never give up on family.”

“Then where’s your sister right now?”

Before he can answer, his cell phone goes off and the caller ID conveniently reads _Sammy._ “Put that thought on hold,” he tells Cain, and puts his phone to his ear. “Hey, what’s up? Everything okay?”

When Sam answers, “ _Dean, don’t worry, I’m fine_ ,” she really doesn’t sound it because she’s been insisting that she’s fine for days, but Meg and Cas, who’ve started their happy little human family down to jobs and a mortgage, are actually sticking around to help out while he figures out this latest mess. She’s that far from fine. “ _Look, Cas found this way we might be able to track Gadreel, but Meg said it could kill me so then Cas said—_ ”

He glances behind him at Cain, who’s continuing to shuck corn. “Tracking Gadreel is good and all, but I thought we agreed on a strict No Dying policy for the two of us,” he says, carding his fingers through his hair. “What is it?”

“ _Some needle thing. Cas said he won’t do anything without you here and I, uh, don’t react well to needles anyway, so are you close enough you come back?_ ”

“‘Don’t’ react well or ‘didn’t’ react well?” Her silence is enough of an answer for him. Fuck. Over the past couple of weeks, Cas had been keeping her up physically, but it was something of a miracle that nothing else showed up yet. Of course she had to have her first flashback while he was away. “Right. What I’m doing is going nowhere anyway. I’ll see you in four hours.”

“I thought you wanted the First Blade,” Cain says after he hangs up. “Leaving already?”

Normally, Dean isn’t the sort to abandoned the hunt. Normally, his sister isn’t the sort to call him away from one. Normally, they’re together. “You never give up on family,” he says again, and figures that if worst comes to worst, he can always track down Cain again. “You had Colette, I have Sammy.”

Cain picks up another ear of corn. “Just make sure you can keep it that way, Winchester,” he says, and Dean doesn’t tell him that he already knows how badly he fucked up.

 

 

Though it takes a while, Sam’s eventually well enough to make it out on a few nearby hunts. It’s around this time that Dean also turns thirty-five.

After Charlie, who Sam called over, and Kevin dissolve into a geek out session and Cas and Meg disappear off to do whatever it is they do, Dean drags his sister back into their bedroom. This also marks the second day in a row where she hasn’t had a single panic attack or lost touch of reality for even a few minutes. “You’re awesome, you know that?” he tells her as she rolls over on top of him.

She’s smiling when she kisses him. “Yeah, I’m aware,” she answers. “You aren’t so bad yourself, jerk.”

They don’t say it, not a lot, and him not at all, but he’s five years away still from eclipsing his time in Hell and she’s got scars on her body done by her own nails. Every morning he’s walking a damn tightrope with whether she’ll wake up speaking Enochian or English and he’s been taking care of her for years and still has no fucking idea what he’s doing most days. But somehow, they're still here.

“I love you too, Sammy.”


End file.
